


The Galehaut Continuation

by SuperLizard



Series: Bury Me [3]
Category: Cursed (TV 2020), Cursed - Thomas Wheeler
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Family Secrets, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 15:09:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 38,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30057381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperLizard/pseuds/SuperLizard
Summary: Gawain is given as a hostage to the neighboring king. The neighboring king sets him free. He finds himself unwilling to leave.Set a few years after What Goes After The Fall. Some of Empty Grave Epitaphs applies here also.
Relationships: Gawain | The Green Knight (Cursed)/Original Male Character(s), Gawain | The Green Knight/The Weeping Monk | Lancelot (Cursed)
Series: Bury Me [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2218221
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	1. Fire

**Author's Note:**

> This work is part of a series written totally out of order. 
> 
> For a chronological reading, start with Empty Grave Epitaphs, and read chapters: 25, 18, 8, 3, 12, 23, 6, 15 thru 17, 11, 10, 5, 9, 24, 27, 28 
> 
> Then read What Goes After The Fall
> 
> Then return to Epitaphs for chapters 22, 19, and 27
> 
> Then read this one.
> 
> Or, you know, do whatever you want. :)

In the first weeks after the war, Gawain came apart at the seams. The pressure that had been keeping him together, the constant crisis that kept him from processing anything while everything else layered on top of previously ignored layers, suddenly gone, turned his mind into a mudslide.

He had been ignoring the stress on his mind for so long that it manifested in his body instead, and at the strangest moments. He even missed the physical symptoms until others pointed out that he was breathing strangely, that he was suffering more headaches than usual. That his hands were ice cold.

He ignored all of this until an illness forced him to stay in bed for a day that became a week, a week that became a month. He woke just before noon, sat at the window of his room and stared out at the frozen fields near the castle. At the woods beyond. He heard the voices of people who had died, saying his name gently, as if they were in the room with him; when he looked up to find them, it was dark outside and the castle had fallen quiet. 

The month became two months. People checked in on him every few days, bringing books that they thought he might enjoy, then as the stack of those grew and he never read them, they stopped bringing books. Then they stopped visiting.

All except Lancelot, who continued as if nothing at all was wrong. He came to sit in utter silence with him for hours, reading from the stack of books or stoking the fire in the hearth and sending sacks of his laundry away with the servants. Encouraging him to eat. Bringing him alcohol.

Slowly, Lancelot's patience ran out, and he began to slowly, insistently pry at the edges of his mind. "What are you waiting for?"

Gawain shrugged, confused by the question. "For it to stop?"

"For what to stop?"

He frowned, reached to rub absently at the left side of his chest. "The… the weakness, I suppose. The cold."

"It's not so terrible weather outside, for all that it's winter," Lancelot pointed out. "Maybe if you take some air and sun, you will feel better?"

The fields outside the castle walls felt like they were a thousand miles away. He didn't know if he would make it before he lost the thread again. Maybe he would make it if he skipped the stairs and just threw himself out of the window. Better to change the subject. "I hear them a lot. The ones who have gone. And sometimes just… something someone has said, over and over again, for hours. Days." 

Lancelot frowned. "Gawain, this isn't healthy."

"I don't know what to do about it," he admitted. "There were too many lives, and too much to fix, too much to protect, and then they all just left and now I don't know what to do with all of it. This isn't normal. I don't--"

Lancelot looked offended. "Why are you shouting?"

Was he shouting? He hadn't meant--

"I know it's been a long war, but I don't deserve that." He stood up. "Not any more."

Gawain tried to form words, but could not. 

By the time he forced out a whispered apology, the room was empty and the fire had burned down to embers. So he climbed back into bed and pulled the blankets up to his chin, and lay very still.

Then Arthur appeared, days or weeks later, with his good nature and his tired eyes. "They told me you were still alive up here. It's a little hard to believe. Do you know how long it's been since you've come to court?"

He glanced up from his vigil by the window, as if to convey his bewilderment. 

"Four months," he answered, "two weeks, and three days. God, I've missed you. You held everyone together."

Gawain lifted his chin just a fraction of an inch, something tugging his heart in a familiar way. If he was missed, maybe he was needed? If he was still needed, could it mean he didn't have to confront all of this hurt yet? 

"You're hardly in any condition, I know, but…"

He waited, but his fingertips itched to reach out, to be touched. Maybe he would receive permission or even an order to come back, some signal that he would be welcomed, not left alone like he had been at the lake. 

His chest squeezed. Better not to think about that now.

Arthur sighed. "I hate to ask this. There's an army coming. A king from the west, Galehaut, who won't swear fealty and disputes the territory--"

His focus slipped. Arthur's voice became noise. He swallowed around the bile climbing the back of his throat, burning from his ulcer to his tongue. He shivered. They wanted his blood again. Not him.

Arthur tossed another log into the fire as he ended the explanation. "So if you are able, when they arrive, I'd like you to lead the army." He looked up with his eyes wide and hopeful. 

Gawain nodded mutely. 

"Thank you," his shoulders sagged with relief. "You are the best general I have. The best at strategy and the best with a sword."

He nodded again, looking again out the window. He heaved a sigh; he was pretty sure he had stopped breathing and couldn't remember when.

Arthur stood and crossed the room to stand beside him. He clasped Gawain's shoulder, and smiled his approval.

Gawain smiled uncertainly back, and reached for Arthur's arm just as he withdrew it, and his fingers brushed his sleeve but he did not catch his notice.

Arthur left.

He spent the rest of the night at the window, hoping the chill would just kill him already.

\--

Three weeks later, Gawain sat on horseback in front of a line of armed cavalry, the line in front of the castle gates, ready to meet this new enemy. Parley had been held and the leadership had spoken and no agreement could be reached to stop the coming bloodshed. They would fight.

Forty thousand men, Gawain marvelled. He wasn't afraid, exactly-- being afraid for his life would require him to want to be alive in the first place-- but the number was staggering. The sight of it. They would lose, but maybe he could save some lives. The feeling of being doomed was at least familiar.

He forwent a speech he wouldn't feel for warriors who had seen too much to need speeches. Shifted in the saddle. Lowered his spear. Signaled the charge.

The battle took hours and bloodied the field from end to end. The moat was piled with bodies from either side. Gawain was thrown from his horse, stole another, and was thrown from that one. He signaled the retreat as the sun started to set, knowing that a night battle would serve neither side. And he was so tired. Bleeding from so many places. He knew he'd fought well, but the overwhelming force of numbers was too much.

He fought at the drawbridge as his forces retreated into the castle, keeping the path clear and forcing back western soldiers who pursued his survivors. Blood ran down both arms, making his grip on sword and shield slip. His boots pooled with it.

Then the pursuing forces stopped and parted, and the biggest Fey Gawain had ever seen, clad in blue and silver, with a sword as long as he was tall, stood before him. He removed his helmet and looked Gawain in the eye, expression unreadable.

Gawain swallowed. From somewhere behind him and thousands of miles away, he heard the hammering of sword hilts on a shield wall. If you stop, you will die. _If you yield, you will die. If you lose, we will kill you._

He hoisted his shield again and shakily squared his posture, making ready for the first blow. But it never came.

Lancelot stood next to him, clutching a white cloth and shouting something to the giant.

 _If you yield, you will die_.

Gawain tried to say something, but his voice didn't work. He was screaming, but there was no sound.

The giant was listening to Lancelot, but looking at him, his expression shifting like the water in a stream, still unknowable. He spoke back, and his voice was strangely soft.

He gestured for his army to fall back.

Gawain collapsed.

\--

Galehaut met with Arthur, Guinevere, and Merlin in the yard of the castle, a gesture of trust on both sides. Lancelot escorted him there, having pledged his life to ensure his safety. In the dead of night, around an iron brazier full of glowing coals, the four gathered.

"I will have your surrender," Galehaut began without preamble.

"King," Arthur called him. "You know we cannot give it. Our people fought too hard against the church and an oppressive monarch and invaders from the ice kingdoms. They chose us, and we must honor their sacrifice by not giving them away."

Galehaut nodded. "You are defeated."

"You have four times the armed men, and your forces are not exhausted from an extended war," Guinevere agreed. "That's hardly a measure of righteousness, though, is it."

He raised his chin slightly, as if realizing Arthur's 'we' wasn't the royal one, but an inclusive one. "You are humans. You will fail them."

"Probably," Arthur agreed. "But we have included Fey in our council and they have equal power." Here, he nodded to Lancelot. "Fey outnumber humans in our order of knights."

"Our war marshall is Fey," Lancelot said quietly. "And our Seneschal. And our druid advisor."

Galehaut scratched his beard thoughtfully. "You have soldiers on my border."

"Of course," Guinevere replied. "You have soldiers on our land."

He smiled slightly, and the mood in the pavilion shifted. Lightened. "So I do. Perhaps not a surrender then, from such a hardened folk. Perhaps a cessation of hostilities."

Arthur exchanged a glance with Guinevere, daring to be hopeful. "What terms did you have in mind?"

"Remove your soldiers from the border. Leave some scouts if you must, but build no fortifications. Let us be peaceful neighbors and show the world that we are. I will leave you my cousin as hostage. And you will give me your heir to foster."

The mood in the tent shifted back to tension.

Galehaut seemed to sense something in the silence. "Usually requesting a child hostage comes with a certain amount of shouting. I'm surprised you're taking this so well."

"The heir is grown," Arthur dismissed. "Sorry to disappoint, he will need no fostering."

"We also can't give him away," Guinevere objected, giving Arthur a hard stare.

Arthur touched her elbow gently and lowered his voice. "Getting away from this place might do him some good, if he recovers."

"You're both so young," Galehaut said, "No child of yours could be grown. And if he has plague, I'll take your queen instead, thanks."

"That's not going to fucking happen," Guinevere told him, hand drifting to her own sword hilt.

Lancelot held up a hand to interrupt. "Please. He is in no condition to travel, and he isn't who you think you want. Perhaps a castle, or lands near the border? You could join the Round Table as peer, and our friendship would be thus secure."

Galehaut studied Lancelot for a long moment, then his expression grew equal parts amused and incredulous. "It's the half-blood from the bridge, isn't it. That's your heir. Your half-brother?"

"My uncle," Arthur admitted.

"A strange succession!" He boomed.

"You have offered no son," Guinevere shot back.

"I have no son," he laughed. "Very well. I will wait here until he recovers or dies, but if he recovers, it's certainly him I want. I know now he is important to you, from all your bickering. You will not risk his life by attacking me while he is in my custody." Galehaut offered a hand across the fire not to Arthur, but to Guinevere.

She stared at it uneasily. "You will also take Lancelot."

Galehaut raised an eyebrow at the ash man. 

"We were to be joined," he admitted. "As soon as the war sickness left him."

Galehaut's expression became unreadable again. "Ah."

Then, without taking his eyes off the half-giant, and for the first time since the beginning of the proceedings, Merlin spoke. "Give Gawain to the giant. Let them go alone. He'll be fine."

They all turned to stare at him.

"Give him a week or two to stop bleeding of course," Merlin rolled his eyes. "I'm not suggesting he go tonight. I'm not a monster."

The silence crept on.

"Alright, yes, I am a monster, but I am not that kind of monster."

Arthur exchanged glances with Lancelot and Guinevere. They both nodded reluctantly. "Very well," he accepted. "Your cousin for our heir."

Guinevere shook his hand.

\--

As soon as Gawain was fit enough to sit a horse, though the royal surgeon pitched a fit about it, he left with Galehaut. The handful of knights that composed the Round Table and all of the members of the council of Logres stood in the castle courtyard to bid him farewell. There were handshakes and a few embraces, then he was up in the saddle and the gates opened, and when the dust left behind by horses finally settled, there was no one still standing there.

It was a grey morning. They were all grey mornings in April, as they were in March and February and January and December and it felt like the sun would never break through the clouds again. The entire sky had given up.

After a few miles, Galehaut hung back until Gawain's horse walked alongside his. He waved for the rest of the escort to keep their distance. "You didn't put up much resistance to this arrangement," he noted. "Not like you did on the bridge. That was incredible."

Gawain nodded.

"You're quite a warrior, to pick up a sword against a superior force, especially if it is as they say."

He looked over with a raised eyebrow.

"They say you have the war sickness," he clarified.

Gawain looked forward again. Nodded.

"Do you know how to speak?" He asked curiously. "I didn't hear a single grunt out of you on the battlefield. It's unusual."

He inhaled and tried to speak, but again, his voice failed him. He shrugged instead.

Galehaut nodded. "That's not so uncommon. My cousin didn't speak for almost a year after he nearly died fighting the King of Ireland. He was suicidally brave for a time after that as well. When he wasn't simply suicidal."

Gawain didn't respond.

"It would be a shame to fight your people again. And if you died, they would surely start a war over it."

He shivered, but hoped it wasn't visible under his armor. He gritted his teeth. No one would start a war over him. That wasn't what he was for. He was for stopping wars. With his body. No one cared what happened inside of it.

Galehaut reached out and grabbed the reins of his horse, bringing them both to a stop. He released the reins and grabbed his shoulder instead, forcing him to look. He was going to say something to forbid him from suicide, but the look Gawain gave him, lost and hopeless and tired and sick, gave him pause. Instead of forbidding him, he heard himself reassuring him. "It's over now. You're safe. You are under my protection, and we don't play politics in my court." He gave his shoulder a squeeze and released him.

Gawain swallowed, tried to speak again, but couldn't. Frustrated with himself, he tried to force a sound, any sound. Nothing.

"Your voice will return in time," Galehaut told him gently. "When you have faith that it will be heard." He let his horse walk again.

Gawain's horse followed his without being commanded. The knight stared at the back of this new king with a sense of awe.

\--

It was three monotonous, drizzling days of riding to Galehaut's castle, but it was worth it. The stone structure was built into a jagged cliff, itself wedged in between the prongs of a fork in a perilous, rushing river. The retinue stopped on the riverbank and began to look after the horses and stretch their legs.

Gawain followed their example, grateful for the pause. What was left of his injuries complained loudly at the abuse, and he was certain at least one had ripped stitches. Oh well. He uncapped his waterskin and took a long drink. He looked the castle over.

"Impressive, isn't it?" Galehaut smirked. "Family heirloom. Built only fifty years ago. Then my grandfather killed the man who built it."

He nodded respectfully.

"My grandfather was a right bastard," he continued easily. "The world is better now that he is dead."

Gawain studied Galehaut for a moment, wondering what inspired this sudden exposition. 

"At least no one is stupid enough to bother approaching it," he went on. "The river empties to the sea close to here. When the tide comes in, the waters slow and the river climbs the banks. Then it's easy enough to take a raft across. The timing is the most important part."

Gawain tipped his head at their horses.

"Oh yes, them too," he confirmed. "You'll see."

He did see. An hour passed, and the water began to slow and rise. Just as it reached the vegetation line, a broad and stout raft pulled into view from around the rocks, steered by two men with poles. They brought it to shore and Galehaut's entire caravan was able to board. The driving team pushed off from the shore, and guided it smoothly past the tip of the island and into a hidden tunnel. The tunnel continued until it was almost impossible to see, then torch light flickered and warmed their way to a stone pier, where everyone disembarked.

The horses were led off one way, and the people another. Gawain could not have lingered if he wanted to, so tight was the press of people before and behind him in the tunnel as it ascended towards daylight.

They spread out again when they reached a courtyard, level and lined with birch trees, tall and fair, just beginning to show the first little fuzzy catspaws of spring. The grass was short and damp, but looked surprisingly soft. There were a few stone planter boxes built into one side, but nothing peaked above the soil yet.

A stone walk and gallery lined two sides of the yard, the arches simple but perfect in construction. The habitable part of the fortress would be there. It emanated soft sounds of life and the smell of meat and bread.

Gawain, faced with warmth and the promise of a hot meal, realized all at once just how cold and hungry he was. How long had it been since he had eaten anything warm? He didn't care to think about it. 

"You look like you're going to pass out," Galehaut noted with chagrin. "Food or doctor first?"

He wasn't sure.

The king nodded to him, looking at someone else. "Put him in the great hall near the fire. Get a surgeon to look at his wounds, then a hot board from the kitchen. In that order."

Galehaut's left-hand man, a Cliffwalker who looked like he might be part giant, too, took Gawain's elbow and guided him mildly towards the building. He took him through the stone walk, past an entry hall where servants took their riding cloaks, armor, weapons, and boots and gave them warm house-shoes and fur-lined robes of quality, and then finally into a hall that looked larger on the inside than should have been strictly possible, given the size of the island.

Gawain figured he should have expected a big place to house such big people. Everyone in the room was at least a head and a half taller than him, and broader for certain. Was everyone in the kingdom so tall?

His guide smiled at his look of wonder and let him linger for a moment, staring around like a baffled child, before guiding him more firmly to a seat next to a roaring hearth.

He sank into the oversized chair, which drew him in as if by magical compulsion. Or maybe he was just exhausted. The warmth of the fire washed over him, and he almost forgot--

He caught the sleeve of Galehaut's assistant and got his attention, then tried to ask, but sound failed him again. He frowned, then figured it out. He pointed at himself, and made a half-circle with a cliff using one hand. Then he pointed at the cliffwalker.

He smiled, seeming genuinely amused to be asked and even more delighted by the novelty of how. "I am Bengt."

Gawain gave a careful smile, then a deliberate bow with his head and shoulders.

"You're welcome," he answered. "The surgeon will come-- his name is Roek. I will send someone with food and drink." He gave a half-bow, perhaps thinking this was some weird easterner practice, then departed.

Gawain sank into the robe and wiggled his toes in the woolen house-shoes, and puzzled over just how insane his situation was. He chuckled soundlessly. He was in a castle at the edge of the isle, the castle had a secret entrance, and it was full of giants that he was definitely just defeated fighting against less than a month ago. _I'm in danger_ , he thought, and almost giggled.

The surgeon was a little closer to a reasonable height, but still a big fellow, blue-robed and carrying a sack of tools. At Gawain's insistence, he-- with a puzzled quirk of his brow-- washed his hands thoroughly before unwrapping the deepest wound on his shoulder and making tsking noises. He cleaned and re-dressed it before moving to the next one, his disapproval growing louder as he did. By the time he had reconstructed the brace on Gawain's definitely-fractured wrist, there was a pile of bloodied and dirty linen wrappings next to him and he had descended into a full-throated rant about foolhardy knights leaping to the saddle before they were ready.

Gawain listened dutifully but it was very difficult not to fall asleep. The fire was so warm and the surgeon's touch was gentle. The pain was a dull, constant noise in his head, like the rush of the river had been. Maybe if he just fell asleep in this den of the enemy, the dull roar would take him under to a place where he would just be invisible.

Galehaut's amused, too-soft voice interrupted his slow fall to sleep. "Are you mother-henning my ward, Roek? Why don't you let me do that for a while. You're keeping the whole hall from enjoying supper."

Roek apologized and groused a little more, but collected his tools and threw the worst of the bandages into the fire. The rest he gathered and took away with him, hopefully to be washed.

Galehaut sank into the chair next to Gawain with a satisfied grunt, and put his feet towards the fire. "This is the best place to be, after a long ride. The only thing that could make it better would be some hot cider. Well, for me. You're stuck with watered wine until you recover."

Gawain smiled quietly, not rising to the bait.

"Bengt says you were downright chatty," he continued. "Asked his name. Seems you two have a rapport already, so I will assign him to look after you when I'm not around. He's a good fellow. Don't charm him, though, he has a wife and bairns at home."

He kept smiling. Then a thought occurred to him. He sat forward, careful not to pull on anything freshly wrapped, and looked around the great hall. 

There were fey men of every type, and some half giants and giants, all men. There was not a single woman or femme in the hall.

He turned his bewildered gaze back to Galehaut and tried to ask. He gestured to indicate long hair, then crossed his arms against each other.

Galehaut's relaxed posture didn't change. "The women? They have their own hall. There's one where we mix, also, and the ones without gender move freely as they please, but in general I have found it keeps people more relaxed if they have a place to just be themselves, without trying to perform anything. Peace is very important here, as you will learn."

Servants approached with a small table, upon which they laid two boards of food and many small jars of sauces. They also brought two basins of warmed water and towels to wash their hands, then they brought a hot mug of cider for Galehaut and a cup of watered wine for Gawain.

They ate in peaceful silence, and no one interrupted them. Someone on the other side of the hall played a lute, not fantastically but well enough. The conversations behind them went on, subdued and unhurried. No one seemed concerned by their king's strange hostage. 

For once, Gawain was not the center of attention. He felt the tension run out of him as if from a lanced abscess, the relief drawing a deep sigh from where there had only been sighs of worry or sadness.

Galehaut smiled a little and helped himself to Gawain's leftovers. "Your folk eat so little. It's why you're so small." 

Gawain exhaled a quiet laugh and sank into the chair again.

"The staff will draw you a bath, if you want one. If you're too tired, they will wash your feet and put you to bed." He sipped his cider contentedly. 

Gawain's eyelids were very heavy.

"To bed it is," he decided, and gestured to him.

The servants reappeared from wherever they had been waiting. He rose and bowed to the king-- a gesture even his proud heart had no trouble doing, for the gratitude of being hospitably kept and understood. He even felt a pang of anxiety over just how ill-prepared he was to return the courtesy. 

"I will see you tomorrow, when you are ready. Or whenever hunger makes you brave."

Gawain exhaled another quiet laugh, and let the servants guide him away.

He slept more deeply than he had in a very long time, in sheets that didn't smell of his own panic, lulled to sleep by the distant rush of the river, and relieved by distance from the worries of the war's aftermath.


	2. Earth

Gawain startled awake and tried to scream. He was damp with cold sweat and for a long moment, he didn't remember where he was. He thrashed and heaved all of the air out of his lungs, but aside from a desperate hiss, he could make no sound. 

The inability to make a sound frightened him further. He froze in place and cast about the room for a threat. 

The river rushed outside his window. Birds sang, utterly unimpressed with his upset. In the woods, the wind shook the branches of the trees indifferently. The sun shone cold.

He struggled to regain control of his breathing and pulled his legs up to his chest, wrapping both arms around them and bracing against the world. After what seemed like an eternity, reality began to trickle into his consciousness as if through a sieve, fine and separate grains. The smell of the fire already burning in the hearth. The mundane shuffling of people moving about the corridor outside the room, and on the castle wall. The feel of the bed linens, and the down-feather blanket that lay over him. The angle of the sun.

He exhaled slowly and uncurled, wincing at the burn in his neck where he had wrenched it. He felt stupid. None of this was helping his situation and he wished he could just get a hold of himself.

He slipped out of the comfort of the blankets, which he definitely did not deserve, and almost tripped over the woolen house-shoes sitting next to the bed. He stumbled, naked and shocked into full wakefulness by the morning chill, to the small window. Greedily, he gasped several lungfuls of cold, crisp air. It was bracing in all the ways that mattered.

With a clear head, he padded to the door to the outer chambers and opened it--

\--and promptly closed it again. There were people in the antechamber and he was completely nude.

"Sir knight, there is no one out here who will blush," a familiar voice called. Bengt?

Gawain clenched his jaw and opened the door again.

Not only were there people in the antechamber, but there seemed to be a small committee. Bengt was coordinating two servants hauling buckets of heated water from a calderon over the hearth to a copper tub, and a tailor making spot alterations to a large, grey piece laid out next to Gawain's clothes, and a wide-eyed young man holding an armful of wooden boxes and rolls of leather. Then, as all of this was happening, two more people turned up at the door with a board of food and a silver pitcher of something cold enough to gather condensation.

Gawain leaned against the door frame and watched all of this happen. His amusement chased away the adrenaline from the nightmare. These people had a very different sense of modesty, indeed.

"Maybe if my lord the hostage would be four hands taller," the tailor groused, making quick stitches to the hem. 

"My Lord the Hostage can hear you, Harre," Bengt chuckled, shooting a measuring glance at Gawain.

He shrugged, still amused.

Bengt dismissed the servants and chased everyone but the tailor out, and waved Gawain towards the bath. "If it please you."

He couldn't say one way or the other of it did please him, but he recognized a polite order when he heard one. He must have smelled very bad after three days on the road, and the sickly smell of panic would be a welcome loss also. He stepped into the tub and got to work.

Their soap had an overpowering smell of pine. It chased away everything else, both on his body and in the room, and lingered even after he toweled dry.

"You have ample time to wash your hair," Bengt pointed out. "If the water has run cold, it can be refreshed."

Gawain waived him off politely. He could wash his hair more carefully if no one was around to see him. The feel of water over his head was… he didn't want to think about it.

"As you wish," the assistant allowed. "We have altered some of the fashion of the castle to fit you better. Your own clothes are from a warmer and drier climate, and will not serve you here. If you would." 

Gawain took the woolen trousers, undershirt, and tunic from the tailor and pulled them on carefully. They fit adequately, though they were baggy in some places and itched. Oh well.

"You will also stand out a little less," Bengt went on, shaking the tailor's hand and sending him on his way. "Of course, there are practically speaking about a dozen people who live in the castle, and a handful of staff aside from the guard, so you will stand out anyway. From your reputation, I suspect that will be enjoyable to you."

What did that mean? Gawain didn't know if he had the energy to puzzle that out. 

"His Grace is currently in the garden and has asked that you join him whenever you feel able, but he also sent food and some light entertainment in case you feel unwell today, and will visit you in the afternoon." Here, he gestured at the pile of wooden boxes and rolls of leather left behind earlier. "Either is possible, as you wish."

He pondered this for a moment. Galehaut was being incredibly considerate and accommodating. The least he could do was brave the door. He nodded to Bengt, and retrieved his well-washed boots from next to the door. 

"You can of course eat first," Bengt offered.

He shook his head without looking up. The morning's considerations had done much to chase the nightmare from his mind, but he didn't want to chance it.

They went together to the gardens, where Bengt surprised him by announcing his presence. He didn't use any titles, just his name, and the announcement was informal to the point Gawain wondered if Bengt was bound for his own execution.

"Gawain's here, Your Grace."

Galehaut looked up from where he was stooped over a planter bed, up to his thick-boned wrists in dark, rich soil. He smiled a broad, genuine smile that tilted the pinched corners of his dark eyes up almost far enough to close the circuit with his black eyebrows. "Good morning, my friend! Come and sit with me by the earth, and listen to its secrets."

Gawain knew more about life in the soil than probably anyone else alive, but there was something about Galehaut's easy happiness that fascinated him and drew him in. His feet moved without his orders, and he found himself leaning a hip against the stone planter bed. 

The stone barrier only came up just past Galehaut's knee, obviously designed for someone of his stature. He had never felt so short in his whole adult life.

Galehaut seemed to sense his chagrin and nodded to the pile of little cloth-wrapped vines next to him, and then towards the back of the planter, nearer the wall of the castle. "Maybe you could climb up and give me a hand. The soil is too loose and soft for steps like mine, but your nimble Sky Man feet would not crush any roots."

He considered how unwise it might be to put his hands in the soil, to remind himself of the strange life between his death and his resurrection. His memories of that time were still in his mind somewhere, and he didn't have the perspective anymore to understand them. Didn't have the right substrate, Merlin had said, before twisting the touch of the Green around that part of his mind and sealing it away. 

But he also wasn't going to shy away from a fucking challenge, not on his life, and the teasing way Galehaut had referred to him as a lightweight had tickled something between his shoulders. He was a large, muscular Sky Man, by the Dagda, and he wasn't going to stand for this bullshit.

He stepped back and to the side, then swung a leg over the stone partition as if fly-mounting a horse. He clambered up and brushed off his trousers, then held out his hand for the tool.

Galehaut smiled and handed him the trowel he had been using to break up the dead roots of the previous year. "Plant the grapes closest the wall, so they may climb. If we're very lucky, in the early autumn we could have some wine made from our own grapes!"

As he pried industriously into the soil, he noted that again, it sounded like Galehaut was using the inclusive 'we' rather than the royal 'we.' The genuine 'our.' He wondered briefly if the king had read the work of the Greek philosophers on the topic of community governance. He even opened his mouth to ask, but no sound came out. He frowned.

Galehaut's smile didn't fall, though the corners of his eyes did. "All is well, friend. Maybe you can write it down later, and I can answer you then?"

Gawain paused, his hand nestled in the dirt, palm half-cupped around the grape sapling. Why hadn't he thought of that before? He nodded, and let the dirt fall between his fingers for a moment. The life of the soil was slow and peaceful, interconnected with everything around it. He remembered the touch of it on his roots. The scent of it on the air after a rain, as enjoyed by the stomata on the rough undersides of his leaves. Galehaut wanted to know what he was going to ask, and he was willing to wait to hear it until he had a way to say it.

He concentrated very hard on planting the rest of the grape vines, then worked his way back towards the edge, planting herbs of every kind. When he jumped down from the edge of the planter box, Galehaut straightened and cast wide handfuls of tiny seeds over the top, then threw loam between the rows.

"Clover," he explained as he worked, "is good for the soil, and it brings the bees and butterflies." He gave a strange little smile and added, "I like their small, green leaves and the way the thin stalks of their flowers require the bees to tread lightly, with respect."

Gawain imagined bees almost without trying. Fluffy, hardworking bees, diligently and patiently collecting what they needed for the community to survive. Willing to sting if cornered, but only then. Bees did not make war on the flowers. Bees returned every year, remembering where they had been. Life had been good as a tree. Maybe it would be good also as a bee. Anything would be better than being himself.

Galehaut stood for a few moments, brushing dirt from his hands and clothes, and watching his hostage get lost in thought. After a time, he squeezed his uninjured shoulder gently and tipped his head towards the gates. "Let's have a walk. I want to show you the rest of what grows here, and what is still to plant."

Gawain followed him up a stone ramp to a terraced walk on the outside of the castle wall, from which fell long, twisting vines which were just beginning to show new leaves. The spray of the river made the way slick and a little treacherous. They carefully picked their way around to the other side of the castle, where a broader terrace caught the full attention of the sun when it shone from the east; this terrace was lined with a stone wall on one side, and nearer the castle wall, there were broad boxes waiting to be planted. The soil was covered in a wood mulch to prevent it from drying or blowing away.

They passed all the way around the castle in a continuous spiral, up and up and up, until they arrived at the top of the rock, over which only one of the towers rose. Every available space from the courtyard to the top of the rock had been planted recently, was home to perennials, or was waiting for the year's new plantings. It smelled of a slow business, the building of potential, the quiet promise of rich life. 

But here at the top of the rock, ringed by a circle of stone, was a level, grassy yard. The dirt had been pounded flat by heavy use. A gate separated the space from the walk, but there was no lock on it.

A round pen.

Galehaut slapped a hand on the top of the post that held the gate in place. "Soon, my stable master will return from the north with horses. The finest he can find. We will need many to replace the ones we lost." He smiled over to Gawain.

 _He's not angry_.

Gawain walked around the outside of the pen appreciatively, enjoying the last of the day's sunlight and the worthiness of the pen's construction. Of the castle's construction. The place was an incredible fortress, but he hadn't seen a single armed man on the walls, nor any armed guard at all. The river protected them completely. There was nothing to fear. The only death was that of the natural cycle, which led to new life.

He sighed. He wanted to melt into the soil of this place, and become a tree again, here. Another hundred years seemed like a fleeting moment in comparison to the way his heartbeat seemed to take ages, the way his current life never seemed, in spite of all his trying, to just end already.

Galehaut studied him in turn, his expression equal parts patient and worried. "Are you tired? It has been a long day already, and a long climb for you. I forget sometimes what it's like to have normal legs."

Gawain quirked an eyebrow. Was he tired? No more than usual.

"Let's go indoors and wash up and get warm, then we can find some paper and you can ask what you were going to ask earlier." Galehaut turned and started back down the long spiral walk.

He was glad to follow, putting him out of sight of his host. Something was happening inside of him that he was sure was displayed on his face, and he needed the privacy to get through it. Galehaut remembered, hours later, that there was something he needed to ask. Something about this made him feel some way. He wasn't certain how, but it was definitely a feeling. Did he want to trust him?

Galehaut was his enemy. Galehaut's men had almost killed him. The king himself had almost cut him down on the bridge, if Lancelot hadn't appeared with the flag of surrender.

Gawain would never have even thought to surrender, even as he was sure he was going to die. But it had worked out in the end. There was a chance to make peace. A chance for them to offer him as tribute, and protect the people. Now he was in this incredible fortress at the edge of the world, alive and inching closer and closer to well. Everything had turned out unimaginably fine.

Something in his instincts was telling him to _surrender_ , and to _trust_ , and the only time he had successfully convinced his pride and paranoia to let these happen, Lancelot had climbed into his head, under his clothes, and up his ass. Then whatever it was he'd found inside of him, he had been so indifferent about it that it had invalidated the work Gawain had done all of his life to keep himself safe. He had not been enough to wait for, when he was clawing his way back to reality at the lake. Had not been enough to remain faithful to. Had not been enough to listen closely enough to hear his desperate plea for help. Had not been enough to stop him from being traded away to the enemy. Had not been enough to follow here, to offer ransom. Or even just to be near him.

"Are you alright?" Galehaut was looking at him strangely. 

They were stopped in the courtyard, in front of one of the entrances which did not lead to the great hall. He did not remember when they'd arrived here. He did not remember how long he had been standing here, lost in his head.

He looked up at Galehaut helplessly, breathing harder than he should have been. He was hollow and crumbling and so very tired. He needed--

Galehaut nodded. "Yes. Anything." He went ahead through the dimly-lit door, and his voice echoed from inside, then he came out a few moments later and took his arm. "The baths are empty. You can hide in there."

Gawain nodded gratefully and started forward, but stopped when Galehaut did not release his arm.

His large, black eyes were laden with some kind of care Gawain couldn't name. "Whatever demon is riding on your back, it doesn't need your help to hurt you."

He paused, breath failing him, but managed to nod. He would not end himself, at least not now.

Galehaut released him, and he made it into the deserted baths before the tears started to fall.


	3. Water

He scrubbed his hands as he cried, as if the bigger part of him couldn't be bothered to acknowledge his emotions at all. He didn't stop to wipe tears out of his eyes. Great, silent sobs shook him as he toweled his hands dry, shook out his tunic of dirt and sand. Then he simply sat on the bench and waited out the helpless anger, the burning shame, and the cold, clutching despair. 

The detached part of him was impatient for all of this to end so he could get on with it, but the soft part, the roots part, the part below the earth, it wasn't sure there was anything worth getting on with. What was the point of being alive only to be so completely without worth for anything except to bleed and die? In a time of peace there would be no place for the little value he did have, and his last use had been wrung out by giving him as a hostage. He wanted to lie down on the dirt and just  _ stop _ . To sink into the ground and never experience another thing. To disappear with some kind of dignity instead of going on, too stupid to be a healer and too broken to be a leader and too hateful to be a companion to anyone. 

Who could possibly want to be around someone so fundamentally hollow and bloodthirsty, so flawed that his own mother had thrown him away? And everyone eventually saw the same worthlessness in him, whatever it was that his effort and loyalty and cleverness could not cover up adequately, and they threw him away too. And what was the point of being alive just to experience that over and over again?

He cried until he was exhausted, then he mechanically washed and dried his face, and went outside to deal with whatever fallout came of his sudden collapse. He would not end today. Might as well get on with it.

Galehaut stood in the courtyard, just outside the entrance. He spoke in low, even tones to Bengt and Roek.  _ Great. I've created a scene, and he's called the doctor. _ But as soon as Gawain appeared in the courtyard, Galehaut nodded to the other two and they left towards the great hall while the king came to stand before him.

The big, considerate, gentle king with the too-soft voice. In his emotionally exhausted state, Gawain wanted to lean on him, to see if he was strong enough to lift all the invisible weight from his shoulders, if only for a moment. Or maybe he would remember that they were enemies and just put him out of his misery already.

"Your hair is still a mess," Galehaut pointed out. 

_ No luck for either _ . He shifted his weight and looked away, hoping he would leave the subject.

"I must insist. It's full of dirt and dried blood. You'll be mistaken for Saint Anthony and run out of the castle on principle." He gestured back toward the baths.

Gawain worked his jaw for a minute, but words failed again. He turned and trudged back into the dimly lit baths and let Galehaut guide him to a chair. The half-giant easily tipped the chair back and dipped a lump of soap in the tub. 

He gently scrubbed it along his part line, then dropped it back in the tray and began patiently working it through Gawain's copper locks. When he reached up to help, Galehaut gently pushed his hands away. "Just relax."

He tried, and almost succeeded for the warm, tingling sensation the strong fingers left in their wake as they scratched gently over his scalp, slid behind his ears, and carefully picked away the dried gore and filth that had built up between the start of the battle and this, its ignominious finish, him tilted over a tub like a child.

He had a flash of a memory, of being bent the other way over a barrel of seawater. He jerked and choked in panic.

Galehaut paused and let the chair legs settle on the ground again. He laid a hand on his good shoulder and met his eyes.

Gawain shuddered, but blinked away the memory and sat back. He swallowed the nauseous twinge. Tilted his head back.

Galehaut retrieved a ladle and spooned some of the clean bathwater over Gawain's hair, starting from the tips and working towards the roots. He had to stop several times to work out a mat or clot.

When the first spoon of water streamed over his scalp, Gawain choked again. His mind was in a river of blood, and it screamed that his body was being used against his will-- to give pleasure or deal death, it didn't matter which, he was in danger and he was  _ helpless _ and no one was coming to help him because he would never be worth saving.

"Shh," Galehaut muttered to him, setting the chair forward and wrapping a towel around his shoulders, folding it over his hair and patting away the water. "It's over now. Whatever it is, it's over, and it cannot hurt you."

Gawain gasped and choked voicelessly, trying to get a handle on the panic, but it snowballed again. He inhaled a stuttering breath and choked out his first word in months, a strangled whisper. "Blood."

Galehaut's brow furrowed, then he ran a palm over his own face. "May I touch you?"

He looked up, confusion showing from under the panicked tears.  _ Weren't you just? _ He nodded.

Galehaut pulled up another chair and settled into it, leaned forward, and wrapped his arms around his companion's shaking form. He gently ran his hand down his back and-- damn him for being so big-- tucked him into his shoulder like a child.

Gawain fucking hated it, but he also couldn't bring himself to struggle or get away. There was something in the stone-strong arms, the inexorable whoosh of air as he breathed, the… were those tears falling on his hair? And the inevitable, burning rhythm of his giant's heart, so close now that he could hear it. Galehaut was complete in a way no one in the world was anymore, and Gawain wanted to be that so badly. And if he couldn't have that, he wanted death.

"You are safe," he rumbled with the voice of a distant thunderstorm. "There are none who shall lay hands on you without your leave, or I will kill them. There are none who shall coerce you, or I will kill them. There are none who shall take you anywhere you do not wish to go, or I will kill them. If you wish to leave here tomorrow, I will allow it. This world shall get no more blood from you while I live. By the peril of my body, and as king of this place, I do so swear."

Gawain sagged against his shoulder finally, and wrapped his arms around him in return, hating that he was clinging, hating that he was being protected, pitied, but Hidden, he needed it. He was a wretched creature but at least he was self-aware. Galehaut didn't know how broken he was, not yet. He could have this for a little while.

The gravity of Galehaut's promise sank in slowly and when he realized what it meant, he quieted and pondered it. Many oaths had been sworn to him before. None had come close to hazarding the peril of what Galehaut had just promised-- the security of his kingdom against war. Galehaut was offering to go to war for him.

He had nothing to offer in return but himself.

He twisted around in the forgiving embrace and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

Galehaut pulled away and studied him with a strange look, as if trying to read difficult handwriting. When he'd puzzled it out, his face softened, became very, very sad. "You don't have to do that anymore. And I will kill anyone who makes you feel that you must. Your body is wholly your own, and you are its sovereign."

Gawain blushed for shame, but Galehaut gave him a light shake. 

"Stop that. I am not offended. It was… flattering. But you are healing and that is the most important matter." He stroked his back again.

He let out a frustrated sigh.

Galehaut chuckled empathetically. "Yes."

When Gawain was ready, he reluctantly extricated himself from the embrace and stood, stretching his legs and back. He was somehow both exhausted and knotted up like he'd been in a fight and the adrenaline had just run out.

Which, he supposed, he was. A fight with himself.

Galehaut stood with him, and they walked slowly out and along the covered walk towards the castle proper. "Would you prefer to take supper in the hall, or in your rooms?"

He hesitated. He wanted company, but didn't know if he could stand being around so many new people, and probably with a puffy face.

"Let's have it sent to your room. After supper, I could join you there for a drink and a game of chess?"

Gawain nodded. Then he stood on his toes and squeezed his host's shoulder before he could do it again to him. With a shaky smile, he moved off towards his rooms, while Galehaut made a confused noise, then laughed.


	4. Interlude 1

Gawain wrote a long, rambling letter after their chess game, sitting at the desk long into the night and burning through candles like he hadn't since he was a youth. He started by asking about the principle philosophical tenets of Galehaut's rule, then about his opinions on the mandate of the governed and the equality of value of every person, and followed it up by describing a potential united trade area for the isles. Several sheets of parchment later, he signed with fervent regards and sealed the entire thing with his own signet ring.

As he did so, his eyes fell upon the simple silver band that Lancelot had left on him during his recovery at the lake.

It had been a charm, and anchor point tying them together when Lancelot and the others had left him unable to wake, vulnerable, and gone to start their bright new kingdom without him.

The long day of emotional turmoil and the late hour compounded the sharp, cold feeling of abandonment, and he closed his hand over it, and put it out of his mind before it broke him down again. One fit of drama was enough, he told himself. No need to heap the self-pity on top of everyone else's.

There were no servants in the corridor, nor in the great hall. He passed a single office where a candle burned, and almost breezed by it on his way to the king's apartments, but stopped. In the office with its door propped intentionally open, Galehaut was scratching away on a parchment with a feather pen. The desk was the appropriate size for a half-giant, but he was hunched over and squinting at the parchment closely, which made it seem somehow too small.

It was oddly endearing. The aspect of concentration and the carefulness of his pen strokes, the promise he had made and the way his voice could go from the softest lilt to the thundering of the heavens… he felt a warm fondness for his new… friend.

 _I wonder if he sings_. Gawain blinked. _What the fuck am I thinking about_?

He put this thought out of his head and politely slapped his feet on the ground as he went, making sure Galehaut would hear him approaching.

The king looked up and squinted in the candlelight. "Is that you, my silent friend?"

Gawain came close enough to place the letter on the desk, which he did, and turned his attention to Galehaut's eyes. They were clear and sharp in the darkness, though the lines around them were tired. He did not have cataracts at least. Gawain pointed at his eyes and then formed a W with the fingers of his right hand and gestured level with his own forehead. _What's wrong?_

Galehaut smiled and reached out for his shoulder, then remembered his annoyance and did not follow through. "My eyes are fine for hunting, but for reading, and by candlelight, they are very weak. I think I shall be quite night-blind in a few years, and then we will have to work out how you can make yourself known to me." He smiled. He was making a joke, but it sounded very small and a little frightened, strange for someone so powerful.

Gawain reached out and took his hand, and placed it on his own shoulder, completing the gesture.

Galehaut laughed, blowing away his fears. "You're right. I will know you always." Bittersweet. He believed he was lying. 

Gawain patted his hand. _Of course you will_ , he replied in his head.

Galehaut gave his shoulder the originally intended squeeze and released him. "I will wake with the dawn to read your words. This correspondence must go out with the first light and I'm afraid I've been putting it off."

He reached over and boldly plucked the feather from his hand, and nodded for him to move away from the desk. When he didn't respond-- didn't see the nod-- he pushed gently against his chest. _Move, you big-- ooh_. Gawain was extremely glad his host had bad eyesight, for the fire of his blush was surely visible. He had noticed earlier when he was crushed against his chest and wrapped in his arms, but now that he wasn't having a panic attack, he _noticed_. Galehaut was a big, strong half-giant, and he was impressively muscular under his loose robes.

Gawain cleared his throat.

"Ah? Do you… will you write?" He slipped out of the chair with a boxer's grace and let Gawain take his place, though dragging the larger than normal chair closer to the desk was a bit of a chore. "I suppose your handwriting will be better than mine."

Gawain dipped the feather in the ink pot and then scanned the page for the end of the frankly atrocious work of penmanship. When he identified the end of it, he thumped his palm lightly against the desk. _Ready_.

Galehaut dictated to him slowly and clearly, his voice a soft and calm rain against the trees, the wind over a field of wheat. He spoke of refugees and their treatment, trade and its requirements, and fealty and its privileges. He took over to sign it himself and to seal the letter with his ring where Gawain guided his hand to do so.

 _Such trust_ , he marvelled.

"Thank you, my friend, for the work of your sharp eyes and graceful hands. You have saved me hours." He stood rather awkwardly for a moment. "The messenger will retrieve it before dawn, but I must ask you one more favor. I am afraid if I walk, I may hurt you with my feet, so bad are my eyes. Could you go before me into the corridor?"

Instead, Gawain extinguished the candles, then tucked Galehaut's arm under his, the giant's wrist at his elbow. It was an awkward angle, but he managed. He tugged him forward into the corridor and closed the door behind them, then guided him to his apartments. Their arrival woke the sleeping servant there, who quickly lit several candles and took over guiding him.

But not before Galehaut squeezed his hand gently and turned as if to say something. He seemed to change his mind halfway through a thought; instead of speaking, he leaned down and kissed Gawain on the top of the head.

 _Well, that's fucking infuriating_ , he thought with endless fondness.

"Thank you," he told him. "Good night."

The last things Gawain saw as the door closed were the wide, shocked eyes of the servant.

 _Fuck_ , he thought as he walked back to his own rooms. _Now the staff will think we're fucking_.


	5. Air

Galehaut was true to his word and rose with the dawn to read Gawain's letter. Then he had a servant read it to him again while he dressed and prepared for the day. Then he gave Gawain clear, measured responses to his questions over breakfast, a chat which extended into an impromptu lecture for squires, knights, and some visiting lords who strayed too close to the sound of his voice and got pulled in.

Two hours later, he concluded his rambling with a sheepish smile. "...and I hope that adequately answers your questions."

Gawain shook his head.  _ No _ .

Galehaut grinned at him for a minute. 

Gawain grinned insolently back.  _ Oh the letter I'm going to write you next, you smug son of a bitch _ .

A lord cleared his throat and stole Galehaut's attention away. He excused himself courteously and followed a gaggle of lords to the morning's business.

He wrote a courteous and insistent seven page rebuttal, which he delivered personally to Galehaut's office, and again walked him back to his apartments at the end of the night, and again received the same promise that it would be read in the morning.

And again, the breakfast conversation around the letter became painfully academic, to the point that Galehaut called for pen and paper so that he could draw diagrams. Several other lords joined into the debate, representing no less than five radically different views on the subject, to the point that Gawain secretly pinched a paper and quill so he could take notes. This morning's breakfast continued until lunch, and would have gone longer if there hadn't been more pressing matters of state.

Pleased and feeling quite scrappy and ready to win, Gawain penned a ten page scathing take-down of monarchy, feudalism, slave labor, the concept of wages, the state of the peasant class, and the concept of aristocracy. He delivered it himself, walked Galehaut back to his apartments, and practically skipped back to his own rooms, smug about being able to finally vent his spleen on these matters without getting thrown in a dungeon and starved.

Somehow, the alternative turned out to feel much worse.

The king did not come to breakfast. Gawain, worried, went up to knock at his door. On the way, he caught whispers and murmuring of the staff, all of them on the same subject.

The king and his dwarf boyfriend were fighting.

_ Gods damn it. _

Gawain didn't have to knock; a servant came out from the room and he ducked in before anyone could stop him-- and they did try, but he was faster and determined.

Galehaut sat next to the window with the pages spread around him on the ground, one page clasped in his hand, and the other hand over his mouth. His eyes were very tired and when he looked up at Gawain, they held a very familiar fear of loss.

Gawain felt dirty.

"You believe these things," he said carefully. "So you cannot think very highly of me, as I am a king. And you, who should be a king but gave it up, would be the surest able to tell me. I… I suppose it's time for changes. The people do not need m--"

Gawain was on his knees next to him, taking his hand and kissing his knuckles.  _ I'm sorry _ . He bowed his head for a moment, then closed the space between them and planted a kiss on his cheek.  _ I'm sorry _ . _Hear me._

Galehaut released the paper and gazed at him with surprise and sorrow. 

He clearly wasn't doing this right. He knew that sadness too well, he could feel its harmonic ringing in his chest.  _ I'm not going anywhere _ , he very deliberately kissed the king's signet ring.  _ Here I am. I'm not going anywhere. I am for you _ .

The king's eyes widened slightly. "You don't… I… thank you, my friend." He shifted his grip to grasp Gawain's hands, then released them and stood, gesturing for Gawain to do the same. "I have a lot of thinking to do. There were many interesting points here, even without the ones that seem to have slipped past my guard." He smiled wryly and then wrapped his composure about himself like a cloak. 

Gawain watched him do this with a sense of awe. His own composure had been in shambles for so long. He wanted very badly to be able to do as he had just seen Galehaut do.

"Let us go and speak with the staff all together. There is something I would like to try."

He set all the lords on one side of the hall, and all the castle staff on the other, and he asked them all how the system of taxation affected their lives. He asked Gawain to take notes, but seemed to file away all of these experiences in his memory anyway. Then he asked about the families of the staff, and how they made their livings, and what they would like to see change in their communities.

Then, after lunch, he did the same thing, but with the ladies and those of no gender. 

Then he took the notes, told everyone he needed to think, and retreated to his own quarters alone.

The next day, he made changes.

\---

The stable master returned with ten new horses, most of them young and unbroken. As soon as the waters calmed, he drove them across the river and they thundered up to the courtyard. The stable master confined them there for a time while the staff divided the few horses which did not need immediate attention and sent the worst behaviors up to the round pen.

Gawain had been at the top of the stone island for an hour or two already, taking the cold sunlight and penning a detailed missive on the virtues of controlled experimental trials over try-and-see methods when testing combinations of volatile organics. He had given up writing and moved on to editing, worried that four pages made it sound too preachy, and the wind was picking up anyway, which made it difficult to write out of doors, even though the light was superior.

The stable master's apprentice and two young squires chased the first horse into the pen and let it start wearing itself out, running circles and huffing indignantly at them every time that it passed. They stood at the gate and did not enter.

Gawain put a stone on his active page and tucked the feather back in its wooden box, capped the ink carefully, and took his time putting it all away. In his intentional stall, the stable master did not come up the walk, nor did any more horses. Odd. He went to lean on the gate next to the squires and apprentice.

They wished him good afternoon politely but warily, having been away from the castle when he arrived and knowing him only by reputation. They were all taller than him,  _ Hidden take them _ . 

He jerked a thumb at the horse and tipped his head questioningly.

"Uncut male," the apprentice told him. "He's aggressive. A biter. Wouldn't let anyone near him on the way here, and he'll kick if you're not careful. He's to be cut, and if it calms him down, he'll be a good warhorse."

"For a dwarf perhaps," guffawed one of the squires. "If someone sat on his back, he'd break in half." 

The other squire punched him in the arm.

"Oh right. Er. I mean to say, anyone with giant's blood," he amended with an awkward look at Gawain.

The knight shot them a deadpan look, and climbed over the fence.

"Oh no, Sir knight, don't--"

The horse's rolling eyes locked on him and quit rolling. It slowed to a gangly trot, then squared up and charged Gawain.

Gawain squared up and charged back, baring his teeth and throwing his arms out to appear bigger, his fingers spread and curled like claws.

"Motherfucker," one of the squires swore, impressed.

The horse veered away from its charge and picked its way back to the edge of the pen, sensing that the sky man was as insane as it was and willing to play chicken. It slowed to a pace and lowered its head, but kept its eyes on Gawain as it circled around behind him, then it screamed and charged him again.

Gawain turned and made himself appear big again. When the horse didn't veer away, he stepped slightly to the side and smacked his cupped hand against the horse's flank, making a loud pop sound.

The sound and sensation of being side-checked by a primate caused the horse to stumble and dance away sideways in confusion. It paced one way around the circle, them the other, as if sizing him up for another charge.

But this time Gawain charged first, which spooked the horse into a canter away from him. Gawain almost laughed at its startled expression. He took a position at the center of the pen and slowly relaxed his posture, letting the horse get a look at him and see that he wasn't going to eat horse steak for dinner-- at least not today. 

It eventually tired and slowed to a fast pace, then a walk, then it stopped and exhaled through both nostrils. It put its head down again, but this time it approached slowly and nosed the ground around him in ever-narrowing circles. Eventually, it got close enough to sniff his boots.

It took an hour, but eventually the horse was playing short games with him, letting him approach, and finally letting him put a saddle blanket on his back and lead him around using little more than his body language. They moved on to Gawain leaning on him, then handling his feet and ears, then finally to him sitting on his back.

By the time the sun started its descent and Gawain began to tire, he was guiding the horse around the pen at a trot using only his shins and the shift of his weight to give commands. The horse was amazingly responsive, and ignored everything outside the pen. So did Gawain, until he realized he had drawn an audience.

He guided the horse to stand near the gate, where there were now perhaps a dozen people, the stable master and Galehaut included.

"I thought we would have to cut him," the stable master admitted. "An expensive Arabian, all the way from Morocco, and he fought us the whole way back."

"He's yours," Galehaut told him.

The stable master's head swiveled around as if mounted on a pole. "Your grace I beg your pardon, but that horse cost more than the rest of the herd combined."

He shrugged. "Do you want to ride him?"

He shifted uneasily. 

"How about you lads?" he asked the gathered squires.

They glanced around, uncertain if Galehaut actually wanted an answer to the question.

"Well then." He nodded at Gawain. "He's yours."

Gawain smiled and gave the horse his shins, held on to its grey mane, and let it canter around the pen. With the wind in his hair and carrying the sweat away from his neck, stirring the smells of horseflesh and forest and river and old, old stone, he couldn't help but let his heart rise to match it.

When he slowed to a walk again and approached the gate, Galehaut was smiling also. "What's his name?"

"Gringolet," he answered, voice rough and quiet from long disuse.

The king would have heard him from the other side of the world.


	6. Crescendo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW

Gawain spoke very little, and most of the time it felt like he had forgotten how, and had to learn to make the muscles in his throat and his lungs and his face cooperate. Sometimes he would speak so quietly that he barely heard himself. Sometimes it was a harsh whisper, air and articulation and no tone. Sometimes he started speaking and the words jumbled together, and he stopped in frustration and abandoned the topic altogether. 

Galehaut listened as intently as he had listened to his body language and gestures and letters and smiles and scowls. Whenever he wasn't tied up with the business of running a tiny, beleaguered nation, he engaged Gawain in as much conversation as he could manage. He told jokes-- terrible, barely funny jokes-- and when he made Gawain laugh, he would grin so widely it was as if the sun had risen in the room. 

It was as if Galehaut was the sun, warming Gawain and making him stronger than he had any right to be. He rose every morning and happily went to be in his presence at breakfast. He found every excuse to be near him, even in comfortable silence while they both worked on different things. He delivered his letter to Galehaut's office and escorted the sun as he set every night, and slept contentedly in the afterimage he left in Gawain's mind.

One morning he woke up from a nightmare and asked to take breakfast in his room, unable to face others just yet. And the sun came to rise for him personally; Galehaut checked in on him to see if he was well. Spoke with him about trivial matters and the results of tournaments in other lands and the various qualities of herding dog breeds until he had forgotten what the nightmare was even about. Then he embraced him, kissed the top of his head-- still infuriating-- and promised to see him again in the evening.

And for a long time after he left, Gawain gave serious consideration to what was happening inside him. He felt safe, not only from physical peril-- Galehaut would bring an army down upon whomever dared to threaten me-- but in his mind and heart, safe. He could think whatever controversial, ridiculous thing, and Galehaut would hear him and take him seriously. He could feel his own emotions without worrying about the burden he was placing on others by feeling anything of his own, or by not sharing whatever they were feeling. 

And he had complete autonomy over his time and his body. What he had-- willingly, and with full knowledge of what it would mean-- given up to accommodate Lancelot, to protect his people, to comfort others, to prevent bloodshed, to preserve a kingdom, to raise a boy that chose him-- every good reason that he had for opening his body for the sake of others was now gone. And at first it had felt like loss, but now it felt like freedom.

And the simple silver band on his finger was as heavy as an anchor, as choking as the collar that held a prisoner, a yolk that tied him like an ox to the weight of another. And something old and left over and screaming from the pit of him still insisted that love was obligation and duty and pain, and if it was easy then it wouldn't be worth having at all, and anyway Lancelot had given up so much for him and fought and bled beside him for his cause, for his family, didn't he owe him a good life.

So he had a panic attack about it, but in the end the safe, well-cared-for, strong Gawain choked that little screaming thing to death and smothered it in the ashes left over when the sun had burned away all of his burdens. He wrote a letter to Lancelot, sealed it with his mark, and tied the little silver band to the rolled letter with a strip of green linen torn from his old tunic.

And then he wrote a letter to Percival with his greetings and good wishes, and reminders to look after himself and his manners, and to seek adventure and do well, and signed it with all of his love, and included in a post script that he should come visit whenever he likes, under his protection.

And then he wrote a letter to Arthur, explaining that he was being well taken care of and not to worry, and that Lancelot was going to be morose for a while and to please take care of him.

And then a letter to Kaze telling her to visit and bring whatever spices she could scrounge up because the food was bland, and to come see his amazing horse.

And then he followed it up with a short note to Nimue admitting she was right, and not elaborating because if she was going to live life as a cryptic water sorceress in a remote pond, then Hidden help him, he was going to play along.

And when the messenger carried an entire satchel of letters away, he felt no regrets at all.

-

Gawain disappeared into a project for a week, requiring the help of a small team of jewelers and the finest glass-blowers in Galehaut's land. Then for good measure he asked the castle's own woodworker to build something to store his project. And at the end of the week it was becoming a real challenge not to reveal what had him so pleased and excited. Whenever he was asked-- which was often, since Galehaut noticed almost immediately that he was up to something, damn him, and then Bengt cottoned on, and then the entire fucking castle knew he was up to something and every squire and handmaiden and clerk had their eyes and ears peeled for clues. 

For all that it was a fortification on a rock in a wild river and wrapped around by old forest and only then the fields and pastures that supported it, there was surprisingly little mystery about it, and the king's dwarf not-boyfriend's delicate little artificing was a hot topic.

He needed something to top it all off. A page and a half of rhyming verse about how beautiful the world was when seen through the right lens, in the right light. His deepest gratitude and maybe a little more.

He took the wood box and the roll of paper to Galehaut's office at the same time he always met him to walk him home, and completely failed to hide his smirk. No matter; the shadows of the late night would do the job for him. He scuffed his feet on the ground as he usually did, but this time he placed the roll of paper on top of the ledger Galehaut was trying to read.

When he blinked over at him, puzzled-- "You'll have to read this to me, my friend, I can hardly see"-- Gawain opened the small wooden box and set it on the desk. "What's this?"

He took a pair of spectacles out of the case, framed with silver and amber, drew his face towards him, and placed them carefully on the bridge of his nose, and tucked them behind his ears.

Galehaut blinked, gasped, and blinked again. He seemed not to know whether to squint or not, but finally his eyes grew very wide. He searched Gawain's face like it was the most interesting thing he'd ever seen.

Gawain grinned, satisfied with his surprise, but the longer Galehaut stared at him, the less sure he was that it was having the correct effect. When tears began to collect, making his dark eyes reflective even in the low light, he panicked.

Before he could say anything, the half-giant reached out and placed a single finger under his chin. He inhaled shakily, then laughed on the exhale, a bit hysterical. "They… they told me how handsome you are, but I didn't understand. Not really."

He held very still. Licked his lips.

"May I… may I kiss you?" He ran the very edge of his thumb along the line of his lower lip with such care, chasing the tip of his tongue as it went.

Gawain nodded slightly.

"I need to hear you grant your permission, or I will not--"

"Yes," he croaked out, then cleared his throat and repeated it. "Yes."

Galehaut leaned very carefully forward, and very carefully he tilted his head, and then he brushed his lips lightly over Gawain's lips, letting him press in and set the depth and rhythm of their touch. Then he broke away as tears rolled down his face, and embarrassed, he turned away and scrubbed the back of his hand over his cheek. "Oh Hidden. What is this?"

Gawain pursed his lips, a little annoyed by Galehaut's sudden role as blushing maiden. "That cannot be your first time."

"No," he chuckled. "And also, yes."

"You're an interesting contradiction."

"Says the freed hostage who won't leave," he grinned. He returned his gaze and studied him again.

"Staying after you freed me, don't you think I deserve a better name than hostage? Or," he huffed and crossed his arms, "'the king's dwarf'?"

He looked away. "I'm… sorry they call you that, my agile friend."

"No, you're not," he sighed.

"No, I'm not." He smirked. Then he bowed his head. "I was hasty. I've made you break your promise. Please forgive me. I won't ever press you like that again."

"I wish you would," he admitted. "I have no promises to maintain. I haven't for some weeks." He let Galehaut take his left hand and examine its complete lack of ring.

The king handled him very gently, like he was made of glass; he moved his hold from Gawain's hand to his wrist, then lightly up the back of his bicep to his shoulder, along his shoulder to his neck, to the back of his head. 

Gawain's breath faltered. He leaned into it, simultaneously frustrated with the gentleness and thirsty for more of it. His instincts gripped him much harder than Galehaut did. They weakened his knees, traced tremors up and down his spine, and told him to _surrender_ and _trust_. But something hot and prideful in his gut told him to demonstrate his strength, to master. And, locked as he was into that clear, admiring gaze, he didn't feel like these were mutually exclusive. He could do both-- have both, somehow.

His other hand joined the first one in roaming Gawain's body, and his expression took on a familiar, fascinated look.

He was being studied. _Oh fuck_. He liked that a lot. The blood ran out of his head so fast that he thought he might black out. "Do you…" he managed, mouth suddenly very dry, "...want to fuck?"

Galehaut gave him a confused look, and for a moment he'd thought he'd gone much too far, misunderstood somehow. Then Galehaut was smiling. "Gawain, I love you. I don't want to fuck you."

He made a noise of protest, but those broad, strong hands were making it very hard to form words, and he was out of practice anyway.

He leaned in and put his mouth very close to his ear, his breath hot and wet against Gawain's neck. "I want to seal the covenant between our minds in the wax of our bodies. I want to press my adoration into every inch of your skin. I want to proclaim the truth of the universe in the sound of your gasps. I want to rise in the east and set in your body, and rise again with the rhythms of the world and have you grow in mine. I want you to know me instinctually, I want to know you like I know the forces of nature, the tides, the cycles of the moon. I want you to turn over me like the wheel of the stars. I want you to ride me into battle, and I want to bask in the light of the peace that comes after. Gawain, I don't want to fuck you. I don't ever want us to fuck." He drew his face back just slightly, gaze falling to Gawain's parted lips and the increasingly ragged draw of air across them. "I want to join us until it feels like there has never been a you or a me to fuck."

Gawain grunted helplessly, curled forward, and came.

Galehaut caught him before his knees could buckle and pulled him closer, murmuring praise in his ear. 


	7. Sustain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW

Gawain's first reaction was shame, but Galehaut was still touching and praising him; stronger now than he had been before. There wasn't room between them for anything as mundane as shame. He gasped and leaned forward into him. "You… How did you do that?"

"We did that," he corrected, unfairly composed. "I could never have taken such beauty from you without your permission."

He wanted for him to shut up. He wanted for him to keep talking forever. He pressed into the king's space and unlaced his surcoat to expose his throat, then he pressed kisses to it. "Your voice is…"

He hummed a tone lower than the knight had ever heard from him. His hands paused in their roaming to tremble.

Gawain kept unlacing until he was bare from throat to waist, and then kissed his way down the same path. Galehaut's body was a resplendent show of force, generous muscles that slid over each other in fractions as he trembled under Gawain's mouth and hands. He felt the heat in Galehaut's trousers like an oven against his own body as he smoothly knelt, unbuckling his belt and picking apart the laces on his trousers next.

Galehaut shuddered as Gawain rubbed him, making promises with his hands. "Gawain, you don't have to."

He pulled his trousers open and his mind began to bend around itself in startling directions as he got his first look at just how big Galehaut really was. He'd had suspicions based on the size of the rest of him, but. "Well! Look at you. How do you manage to do anything with this claymore in your trousers?"

He groaned and laughed. "I don't often find myself in the mood to use it."

Gawain's thought processes were still ramping back up after his unexpected orgasm, but one thing was perfectly clear-- this wasn't going to fit in his body. Which meant it was time to get creative. He spat on his hands and rubbed them together with a game smirk.

Galehaut quirked a smile at him, eyes round and black behind the spectacles. He admired the perseverance. "Do you… want to get acquainted?" He untucked himself from his underclothes and sighed relief as he sprang free.

"Dagda," Gawain swore. He was going to have to get very creative. "Are all giants this giant?" He wondered. 

"Hybrid vigor," he snarked. "I'm statistically aberrant."

He smirked back, then took him in both hands and gave him a long, firm stroke, then another, until he could see the head emerging from the foreskin. This was going to be a workout.

Galehaut groaned and twitched.

Gawain kissed around the head of his cock, letting his lips loose to explore the contours of it, the already salty slit. He was velvet and clean and so different from what he was used to. So thick and almost as long as his forearm.

He moaned, but dared not move a muscle. He locked eyes with him, surprised and a little afraid, but still dark and heavy and unwilling, perhaps unable to order him away. 

"I love your composure on most days," Gawain growled, turning to graze his teeth along the shaft. "But not tonight. Tonight, you're coming apart, too. It's only fair."

"I don't want to hurt you," he admitted, raw and honest.

Gawain smoothed a hand over his hip and the inside of his thigh. "You won't. I trust you completely. You're going to hold on to this chair and close your eyes and think about what it's going to feel like once I figure out how to get this down my throat."

He moaned a lot louder now, but he wrapped his hands around the chair legs behind him and canted his hips forward, sitting just on the edge and letting Gawain nudge his legs further apart.

Gawain licked with just the tip of his tongue until every sensitive spot was found. He held and stroked his balls, a task for which his entire hand felt almost inadequate. He sucked steadily harder at the tip as he stroked and fondled with his hands, until Galehaut's shuddering breaths became almost as loud as the straining noises the poor chair made. He applied his tongue on the downstroke, rolling his fingertips and the line of his thumb along the top and the bottom of the shaft. 

Then Galehaut's breath caught. He ground out a warning between his teeth. "I'm going to come."

Gawain quirked an eyebrow as Galehaut leaned forward and tried to push him away. He released his cock and slapped his hands away, gripped his hips and pushed him down on the chair insistently.

He huffed incredulously, but allowed him.

He returned his hands to the job and felt Galehaut's balls rising up, throbbing, drawn back like a line of archers with arrows ready. He tucked his fingertips behind his sack and pressed at the sensitive point there, sucked hard as he pulled his head back and rolled his lips around the ridge of his head as he pushed forward-- rocked back again, and then forward, harder, more insistent--

Galehaut rolled his head back and moaned as if in relief as his body came free of itself, as his balls launched an incredible volume of slick, white seed into Gawain's mouth.

Gawain gamely tried to swallow, but it was too much, and a great deal of it ended up on his face and chest and the floor and  _ Gods, how is there still more of this. _

Galehaut lay back for a long moment, his broad chest heaving, but not once had his hips or legs shifted from where Gawain had put them. He had maintained total control over himself, even as he came. 

Gawain wiped his hand across his face, then gave up and shed his own tunic to use for cleaning up. It was well-coated in the front anyway. He spat a generous mouthful of spend and then gently dabbed Galehaut dry as well.

Galehaut watched him fondly, more intensely than he ever had before. "Are you well? Did I hurt you?"

He trsked. "You didn't hurt me. You were-- are-- magnificent."

He shifted back on the chair and drew him forward, pulled him into his lap to settle astride him, held him in place by his hips. "It's been a very long time. I was worried."

Gawain smiled, leaning forward to press their bare bodies together. The feel of hard flesh against hard flesh was comforting, grounding. He spread his hands against his broad shoulders and studied him in return. Galehaut's heart thumped under his, steady and all encompassing, as if it came from the center of the world.

"Another name," Galehaut mused.

"What?"

"You deserve another name. Not hostage."

"Definitely not 'dwarf boyfriend,'" he grumbled, but smiled.

Galehaut laughed, the motion of it shaking him too. "No, not dwarf boyfriend."

Gawain blew out a breath, and tried. "Lover?"

He tipped his head to the side, then made a counter-offer. "King."

"You're crowning me because we made love?" he raised an eyebrow.

"Because you are already a king in your own right, because you are worthy of it, because you belong here, and because I love you. And," he added the last in a voice soft and small, as if he were frightened how Gawain might react to it, "I want you to stay."

Gawain's heart skipped a beat. Beat two in the space of one. Skipped again. "Say that last part again."

"I want you to stay," he obeyed.

The thought of leaving felt a lot like a tree considering uprooting itself. The knowledge that someone wanted him, not his sword or his knowledge or his courage or his name, but just him?

"I shall stay," he promised.


	8. The Sun In The Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW

May cracked open the sky and filled the world with golden light. The days were a relentless blue expanse governed by the sun alone, and he chased it from one side of the island to the other, his horse following after him like an overgrown dog. As the weather warmed and dried, he felt the wanderlust in his bones again like he hadn't for a decade.

The grapes began to climb the walls, and most of the planting beds and every available untrodden surface was planted with flowers of every kind. The island buzzed with the industrious work of bees. When Gawain had asked why so much of the island was planted with flowers of no medicinal or nutritional value, Galehaut would only give a small shrug and said that they might be good for something this year.

The island smelled incredible. Gawain felt incredible. It was his first spring in more years than he could remember that he was well rested, well fed, well practiced with sword and bow, and well in his heart and mind. Even his years with Galen had been fraught with new cultures and customs to navigate and the shadow of disaster from the desert. But here, he had fit into the local culture like a missing piece; Galehaut had untied him and woven his frayed edges into the tapestry of the kingdom's life with so much skill that he couldn't imagine being any other way.

"You should go hunting," Galehaut advised him over supper one day, when he had been more distant than usual but not at all morose. "It seems like this island is too small for you."

He smiled wryly. "There is nothing small about this island."

He laughed. "You need more than this, I see it in the way you prowl around here like you've gone feral."

"It's because you drive me crazy," he riposted.

"It's because you're a wild vagabond," he parried. "You'll have an adventure or a fight, and if this castle is to remain standing, it's better you find one or the other on the mainland. Go for a day. Get your toes in the soil and your wings in the wind."

He groused a bit but not unkindly. "What about you? You could have some time away from all of this. A week."

He guffawed. "A week away? I'd go no farther than the garden. I like it here."

Gawain smiled softly, then he smiled mischievously, and by the time Galehaut begged him with a silent look not to vent what was obviously on his mind, he was grinning and his green eyes were watering from the effort of keeping his thoughts to himself.

"You're as mad as a March hare," he scolded fondly, "and here it is already May. Get off my island and go kill something or rescue someone or break a feud or whatever it is knights do when you're bored."

He kept grinning, but capitulated. "I will hunt tomorrow."

"Catch something nice."

"You will, when I arrive home," he whispered, and then he excused himself from the table and padded away to his evening reading. He looked back at Galehaut before he left the hall as he always did, and his lecherous smirk fell away when he saw the king's soft, fond look.

Home, the king formed with his mouth, the word carrying in silence across the noisy hall.

He smiled a little bashfully, but he nodded and mouthed the word back. Home.

The look Galehaut gave him filled his chest with love. He didn't know if it was Galehaut's love for him, or his for Galehaut. And with how they had grown together, he wasn't sure those were different things at all.

\--

He rode out with the morning tide, Gringolet leaping most of the way across the river and then swimming the rest of the way while Gawain took the boat like a civilized creature. Once on the other bank, he let Gringolet shake off and they set out into the woods together, on their own feet while the horse dried.

On the first day, Gringolet caught more than Gawain did, but it was satisfying to be in the forest all day, listening to the cacophony of birdsong and wildlife seeking mates. The shade covered their wandering like a blessing, but he was glad he'd worn a loose tunic and breeches; the sun worked its magic on him anyway, and he felt like he could have carried Gringolet back across the river himself. He even considered trying, just for the fame of it, but the tides were timed wrong and he would be waning again by the time the ferry arrived. Still, it was a blessing to be out of doors and moving with purpose. The forest imbued him with something of its wildness.

When he returned home, he shared that wildness with Galehaut until the big man was tense and writhing before him, and they joined their bodies half a dozen ways, their hearts beating in time.

He went out again the next day, this time convincing Gringolet to at least stand on the ferry. His hoofed warhound, pleased to stretch his legs, carried him obediently about the woods. They spotted, but did not catch, a fourteen point imperial stag with a glossy tan hide, even except for a foreleg that was white up to the knee. They followed it for a while but never got close enough to loose an arrow, and at the end of the afternoon, it bobbed its noble head at them as if paying respects, and launched itself nimbly away to the east.

He returned home, washed, and stalked after Galehaut as he moved from obligation to obligation, task to task, until at the end of the evening, he finally surrendered and let Gawain dismantle them both with his hands. As they lay side-by-side on the plush carpet in the royal library, surrounded by their clothes and soaked in sweat and sex, Galehaut studied the side of his face and sighed contentedly.

Gawain smiled at the sound, and wondered if he could go again.

"You know," Galehaut mused, "I think we've had more sex in the last two days than I had before I met you. I must be terribly dull as a partner. You're so adventurous."

He folded his hands behind his head and smiled wider. "There are some who call me the Father of Adventure, you know." He wiggled his hips.

He laughed, but it was pensive. "Are you satisfied?"

He quirked a brow. "Yes. I am repeatedly, enthusiastically satisfied. I hope you are? Where are these questions coming from?"

Galehaut shrugged and studied the ceiling.

Gawain sat up, alarmed. "Galehaut? Lover? What?"

He smiled and stroked his arm comfortingly. "I am well satisfied in every way by you. But I am… concerned about my lack of experience, and you've… well, you've got a reputation. I worry that you're going to get bored of me."

He laughed with relief and climbed over to straddle his hips and sit on him. "By all the Gods who have ever walked. You're everything. I will love you until the stars fall. And, if for some reason our dicks fall off, I will still continue to love you."

Galehaut smiled and rested his hands on Gawain's legs, letting the smaller Sky Man grind against him languidly. He felt his body respond to the invitation, rising until his shaft pressed against the crack of his ass. He grunted, then chuckled and grinded forward to encourage it. "How do you do this to me?"

He tipped his head back and squeezed his buttocks, letting Galehaut feel his strength. He laid a palm on his lover's chest for balance, and surrendered to the feeling for a moment. "Hm. I can think of something that I want to try, someday."

"Oh?" He prompted, letting his big hands roam up and down Gawain's sides, greedy for every plain and valley of him.

"Yes." He rocked back against him in a way that made them both gasp. "Oh fuck. Maybe I want it right now, actually."

Galehaut had stilled with that first attack, and the second wave made him exhale sharply. "Gawain? It would kill you. I would kill you."

"I know," he growled, "But only imagine it with me." He rocked back again, insistent. "Your sweet hardness, all the way to the core of me. All my body around you, squeezing and holding you. You know how strong I am. How tight I would be. You could reach all the way up to my heart and take it. It's yours." 

Galehaut practically snarled and surged up, wrapping an arm around his back and flipping them over, dragging his cock out from under them with a single fluid motion as he did. With the strength he usually kept hidden away, he pushed it against Gawain's flat abdominals and let his weight sandwich their cocks together between them. He leaned forward and bit down on Gawain's shoulder firmly, but not hard enough to break the skin. A warning. When he collected himself again, he kissed the skin there and then moved his nose against his cheek. "I want that too. You can't understand how much."

Gawain's eyebrows had gotten lost in his hairline somewhere. "I think," he said around the growing incoherence of arousal, "that I might have some idea."

"We could…" Galehaut's brain stalled for a moment when Gawain arched his back and pressed insistently. "Down, boy. We could see how much you could take." He placed his hand next to Gawain's mouth.

He eagerly took Galehaut's thumb into his mouth and gave it a firm suck, then lathed it with his tongue. Then he pushed it out and turned his head to capture his index finger and give it the same treatment.

"Optimistic," he appraised.

"Quiet. Put that inside of me immediately," he ordered.

"Yes, my king," he acquiesced, and settled back, folded Gawain's legs up, and got to work. 

He managed a second finger before he was cursing and whimpering praise. Then they both lost their patience and Galehaut fucked him with two fingers until he exploded, and then took himself in hand and added his own load to the soup.

"I think we'll have to work up to it," Gawain admitted as soon as he was able to form thoughts.

Galehaut laughed. They lay around until they were sure the usual staff was gone to bed, and then cleaned up and snuck to their rooms unobserved, legs weak.

Gawain did not go out hunting for the rest of the week. He didn't do much of anything but lay around and read, due to his inability to walk straight lines or normal distances. When he didn't deliver his nightly epistle, Galehaut checked on him and soothed him to sleep with his voice.

-

They were truly happy, they each realized separately, and they told each other as often as they could. May became June, and the island continued to bloom from one side to another, the perfume of the flowers intensified by the heat. Galehaut summoned Gawain to one of the little garden nooks at precisely one in the afternoon. The sun streamed into the space made by the natural curvature of the stone walls, lighting the deep green clover, the wisteria and ivy, and the flowers whose delicate velvet promises whispered from one side to the other of life, receptiveness, and joy.

Galehaut stood in the middle of the clearing, in a fitted ivory high-necked surcoat, boots spotless, spectacles fitted over the bridge of his nose. He was impeccably groomed today, his black beard trimmed exactly, his hair neatly combed down and fixed under the gold circlet that hinted he was king of this place.

Gawain's heart thumped in approval. He was a fine looking man, though he usually tried to hide it. He cleared his throat quietly and raised his chin. "You called, my king?"

Galehaut's dark eyes fell on him and lit up with delight, then pinched with anxiety. He took two steps forward, glancing around to make sure they were alone, then ducked his head to collide with Gawain's in a fervent kiss. 

He hummed with approval. He slipped his arms around him, and settled to lift him-- something he would only try with the help of the sun-- but Galehaut broke away.

"Wait. This is all out of order." He stepped back, extricating himself from Gawain's arms, then knelt in front of him and took his hand in both of his. "Sir Gawain, my king and the sky which stretches over me day and night, will you overlook my flaws and failings, embrace me as your own, and join with me?"

Gawain tried to speak, but the words didn't come. His knees hit the dirt in front of Galehaut and he tugged his hands to his mouth, kissed them insistently, and then released them and traded this for kissing him deeply and properly, as if trying to chase that offer to its source.

Galehaut cooperated happily under the kiss, until his arms were full of knight and they both came up for air. "You have to say it, Gawain," he reminded him. "I have to hear it in your handsome voice."

"I will," he promised. "Only never kneel to me again. Not like this."

"How else am I supposed to be able to reach you?"

He laughed, heart full to bursting. Then he gathered Galehaut up in his arms like he had intended to do before, and kissed him longer and softer.

"Oh," he said when they were both standing on their own feet again. He looked around the little alcove like he'd never seen it before. "I understand the flowers now."

Galehaut, damn him, blushed. "Yes, I thought they might help to make the moment perfect."

"So you've been planning this since… since when? May?"

"Late March," he admitted.

"You didn't tell me?"

He smiled. "That would rather defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?"

He huffed and moved back into Galehaut's personal space, always greedy for physical contact while they could have it. "Do we… who can we tell?" 

Something in Galehaut's expression became stormy, but Gawain knew the clouds weren't for him. "We should tell everyone. They should know they are going to have a new king."

Gawain worried his lip. "The traditionalists and the Christians--"

"Fuck the Christians. And fuck the traditionalists. And fuck the succession. They will all adjust, just as they have adjusted to the changes we have made together."

He did love a revolutionary. And the thought of being able to touch Galehaut whenever he wanted, to receive by light of day the stream of poetry that poured from his lips when they met in his office at night, to accompany him to meetings and negotiations, to stare down his enemies from his side and defend him in every conflict? He was heating up. "Fuck," he whispered. "Yes."

He smirked. "I thought you might like that idea."

"When do we tell them?"

Galehaut reached into his surcoat and retrieved a smaller gold circlet, this one in stylishly masculine oak leaves and twisting antlers. "Now."

Gawain didn't break eye contact as it was placed on his head. He couldn't have, even if he tried. To have a partner-- a betrothed-- who would lock shields with him instead of hiding behind him or taking control; it was everything he wanted and more than he deserved. If the whole world crushed them for it, then at least they would be crushed together.

They walked side by side to the castle proper; all along the walk, the staff regarded them with different smiles than they usually did, and broke into excited chatter behind them. They passed by a circle of court ladies having games on a sunny lawn, and the delighted squeals began almost immediately. Some rose to walk alongside them and offer congratulations and well-wishes, until they arrived at the flower-bedecked courtyard surrounded by fey and giants.

"Do you happen to be armed today?" Galehaut asked casually.

"I am not," he answered just as casually. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason," he replied.

They stopped when the man-blood members of the court collected in the entryway with crossed arms and cross looks, their one priest between them and the lords standing in front.

"Ah," Gawain concluded. "I guess I'll need to loan a blade off you, then."

Galehaut smiled mildly at the gathering. "My lords, you seem to hold some opinions. Would it make you feel better to vent them?"

The sullen knot of them shifted and murmured uneasily. Finally, one of the lords in the front of the gathering spoke up. "We had thought that Your Grace's truce with the human king of Logres signalled that our kind and our customs had come to be in favor in your kingdom, or at least tolerated. But then Your Grace let this ambitious foreigner, this arrogant creature defile you."

Gawain tipped his head to the side and did not comment on who exactly did most of the defiling.

Galehaut regarded them evenly. "My kind don't share your definition of physical partnership."

"Physical pa-- Hah!" The bravest of them scoffed. "Your Grace admits to sodomy, then. A crime."

"Not in this kingdom," he pointed out. "And it is an ugly word for a beautiful act. As beautiful when shared in love as when man and wife share it."

"Begging Your Grace's pardon," a second voice joined the first, "but he is not even your species."

He lowered his chin and looked at the small man intensely. "The Queen Mother and my royal father were not of the same species either."

"They were at least able to produce an heir."

"We will ensure the succession," Galehaut reassured them, "of that you have my promise."

"Oh I shall have my wife start knitting immediately," the first lord shot back.

Gawain calmly took Galehaut's hand. "Your Majesty, by your leave."

The half giant's mild smile shifted, his lip pulling up over a sharp incisor. "It is granted, my betrothed."

He calmly, carefully tugged Galehaut's glove off of his hand finger by finger, telegraphing his moves so that all could see. Then he drew Galehaut's own sword out of its sheath, and briefly knelt at his feet, kissed his hand, and spoke in a clear voice. "It would be only a slight favor to me, who am in your debt, to make this payment for you. Moreover, I am armed and blessed of the sun, as you see. Fair, sweet betrothed, do not deny me the boon I desire and request."

Galehaut nodded calmly. "Betrothed, you honor me."

The entire crowd on both sides of the courtyard drew closer together and farther from the center as in one fluid motion, Gawain straightened and twirled lightly a blade which was nearly as long as he was tall. He ended the flourish with the tip of the blade low and the edge forward, closing the lower line of approach and engaging every muscle in his sword arm to keep it there. 

Gawain the Mild stalked towards the humans, and they drew back from the brave lord and from him. He smiled. Mildly. Opened the line of attack so the sword prevented the human from running. "You have spoken hastily," he offered. "Perhaps the heat of the sun has made you forget that you were speaking to your king."

Even though Gawain could see him sweating and practically smell his fear, the lord had at least the decency to own his words. "You are an outsider and a hostage who won't leave. One can only assume you aren't welcome in your own country, especially given your reputation seems to be written in human blood. Then you fall into bed with our king? One would have to be truly mad to trust you."

Gawain continued to smile. "That's true; one would. Humans slaughtered most of my family and friends, burned my villages, and tried to eradicate my culture, my people's way of living. And yet I have never raised a hand nor spoken an ill word about any man-blood in this kingdom or court. But this," he held up the glove in his left hand, "isn't about me, or fey, or humans. This is because you called your king a criminal, and refuse to own the offense. Instead, you have elected to hide behind racism and a personal vendetta. You insulted your king. And that," he whipped the glove across the man's face with a humiliating loud crack, "is why you find yourself facing his champion in a duel."

The lord took the slap with a stoic coldness. "You know, I could even have forgiven all of this, if he could at least beget an heir on you. But no." The lord took the glove from him. "I accept. I will choose a champion. Someone who owes me a favor."

Gawain waited patiently.

"I beseech you, by the debt you owe my family for our support in the war, duel this foreign aggressor on my behalf, Your Majesty."

The courtyard filled with pensive murmurs.

Galehaut shrugged. "You can see I'm rather unprepared. I find myself without my sword. You'll just have to choose someone else, I'm afraid. The priest, maybe?"

The robed man in the crowd behind the brave lord shrank back as Gawain's cold green eyes fell on him.

"No? Then can I suggest the accountant there, who whispers in your ear about the kingdom's accounts and which lands are most fruitful."

Many pairs of eyes fell on the accountant, who turned red from neck to forehead.

"No again. Is there none among you who will duel my champion to uphold the charge of sodomy with a foreign infiltrator?" Galehaut put his hands on his hips and shook his head, feigning disappointment. "How embarrassing. Well, the tide doesn't come in for another four hours, so I'm going to take my betrothed inside for tea and chess, and you all can take two hours' time to find someone to fight him, and if you don't, then Lord Escanor forfeits the duel, and his lands and title, and agrees to fuck off forever."

The courtyard broke into an uproar. Galehaut ignored it and marched through the handful of humans like they weren't even there. Gawain fell in step behind him, offering his sword back hilt first and then his glove. 

Two hours later, Lord Escanor took up a sword himself and did decently against Gawain for a full five minutes before Galehaut advised him to quit playing with his food, and Gawain stepped into his guard, seized his own blade with a gauntleted hand, rotated it like a lever, and flung Escanor's blade out of his hand. Then, because it was his first fight since the war and battle to the death was written into his blood, he kicked him in the chest to topple him, stepped on his chest, and raised his sword.

"Mercy," he shouted.

"Damn," Gawain swore, stepping back and lowering his blade. "Fine, but do the part from earlier, with the leaving and never coming back."

"I accept," he agreed, and took Gawain's offered hand to rise. He clung to it a moment longer and brought him close. "I don't care what you do behind closed doors," he said quietly enough that only his opponent would hear him. "But you can't change things this fast. People will start to lose trust. Taking the stories of peasants. Empowering the castle staff to participate in budgeting. Indexing taxes to the harvest. Ending a royal line. Those are all big, big changes. There are people with more to lose than I had, and they will kill you."

Gawain stared at him, stone-faced. "I've met a few of those. They all went down as easily as you."

"Wait until there's twenty thousand of them." Then he released Gawain's hand and departed the yard to collect his belongings and take his leave of the kingdom.

Gawain stared after him for so long that Galehaut came to join him.

"Are you hurt?" He asked.

He shook his head.

The king turned to look in the same direction, but Escanor was long gone. "What did he say to you?"

"He gave me advice." Gawain shook himself, and ran a hand through his hair, then smiled at him. "I haven't been in a fight for several months. It must be that."

Galehaut returned his smile, but threw an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close. Tucked him safely against his side. "Must be."


	9. The Folly of Narcissus

In July, Galehaut relented and agreed to take a break from kingdom business and go with Gawain to the mainland and hunt the stag Gawain had seen in the woods. They took two squires with them; they would stay on the mainland for a few days, but never stray too far from the castle, in case of an emergency. They would camp within view of the road.

They rode side by side with the squires behind them until they reached the place the stag had been seen before, then they split up. The squires stayed with the horses and began building up camp. The king and the knight went into the woods.

They spoke only in hushed voices, when they spoke at all. Their ease in silence was practiced and they worked together as two hands from the same body, finding hoofprints and bits of tan fur. In the late afternoon, they were rewarded with a momentary sighting of the beast. It stood at the top of a stone cliff, chewing boredly on twigs with such a deadpan expression on its face that Gawain almost imagined it rolled its eyes at them.

Galehaut chuckled, and it moved away. "It can smell us. Tomorrow, let's cover ourselves in mud and try again."

They returned to the camp and had a light supper around the campfire. It was then Gawain finally noticed something about their two cliffwalker squires. "You two are a thing, aren't you?"

They glanced at each other shyly, but one of them nodded. "Yes, your majesty."

He made a face. "'Sir' is fine. Or just Gawain."

They stared at him, aghast.

"Alright, have it your way." He looked over at Galehaut, who was holding back laughter. "How many of us are you hiding?"

He spread his hands. "All of us, if I can. Any who come to me, if they be unable to return to their homes for fear of their lives, they find a place in our home. All I ask is that they harm none, are true to themselves, and leave everything behind them that they can. No family but their own children, no lovers or friends but the fellow persecuted."

Gawain considered this boon and its addendum. "You save their lives, but you save only their lives."

He nodded. "The hate comes from somewhere, and it runs deep. It's cultures and histories, the blood of the covenant and the water of the womb. It spreads, like you saw in the man-bloods, and has to be cut away, like you did in your duel with Escanor. It cannot be tolerated to stay amongst those it has hurt, or it will hurt again."

He mulled this over. "You ask them to leave their way of life behind. That's why Nimue refused to send any here, during the war."

He nodded again. "I did offer, and some of your people fled to live on our lands. Mainly the cliffwalker, who lived on our borders already."

Gawain felt something that was like anger, but distant. "Why did you fight us?" He looked up, and all humor had disappeared from his lover's face. Regret had overcome the righteousness and the laughter and replaced it with a grimace. He didn't want to dig into that, but… "I'm sorry. I need to understand."

"Your land was in turmoil for so long. Invasion, the church and their violent intolerance, the lack of a clear succession. Then a man-blood king took over, and displayed fey hostages in court. Gave your lands away. Made peace with the unjust. Forgave genociders. Disinherited you." He scrubbed a hand over his face. "I heard about you during the war. About what you gave, and how afterwards you suffered. I thought we would attack, and you would capitulate, and the battle would be quick. From all the reports of how you suffered, I could not have known about your incredible loyalty." He took a shuddering inhale. "But then I saw you on the bridge, and I…" 

Gawain felt the echo of Galehaut's past heart breaking. "I fought for my family and king," he said quietly. "I wasn't mistreated."

Galehaut looked suddenly tired. "You couldn't speak for two months in my castle. How long had it been, before that? How long since anyone had held you?"

He pulled his knees up, closed his posture. Lancelot, his mind wanted him to say. But no-- for months, even Lancelot hadn't bothered to touch him. And after he had tried to ask for help, he hadn't bothered to speak to him either.

"That's why," Galehaut admitted, voice rough with unshed tears. "Unjust kingdoms cause pain like that. And I wanted to stop there from being any more pain." 

Gawain examined the old pain for what it was, and found that he would have done everything differently, if he had known. He would have saved some lives. Surrendered. Trusted. The grief had become regret. "You are a singular soul. There is no one else like you. We could not have known that at the time."

Galehaut shifted until they were sitting side against side, and put his hand on Gawain's back, soothing him while he processed his thoughts.

"How did you come to be like this?" He wondered, voice thin as a reed but determined to know. "You can not have been born a philosopher. And you didn't get your compassion from books."

He chuckled, warm and sold against his side. "If you can believe it, I was born small."

One of the squires scoffed.

"Really," he insisted, amused. "I was born so small that they thought I was going to die any day, and I just never did. My mother was a giant, and my father a human. I was born smaller even than a human child, and I was sickly in my childhood. I spent a lot of time reading to escape the bullying of other children and the pain of how my body grew out of the natural order. I faced hatred for my mixed blood, for my unnatural aspect, for my father's crimes. My mother's people resented me for my father, and my father's people resented me for my mother. There was no way to win, so I just… quit playing their games." He squeezed Gawain gently. "I came to understand the others who were hated, and when my body finally sorted itself out and I became powerful not only politically but physically? I had no illusions that the sudden kindness of the people in power was real. So of course I side with the powerless."

Gawain trembled under the implications of his magnificence, and his own relative inadequacy. His foolishness. To come to his kingdom and criticize him? To fight against him? He had thought that power corrupted, that the people had to provide the mandate to rule, but what if the people were full of hate? What if the born king was a just man? He had misunderstood everything. 

"Are you well?" Galehaut wondered, shifting to see his face. He wiped away a tear track with his thumb, only to see it renewed. "Gawain?"

"You are the king I told myself didn't exist." His voice trembled with the rest of him. His world was shaking apart. "I abandoned my ideals so that I could serve my people."

He embraced him urgently. "You did what you had to do to survive. You would have come back to them, if you had been allowed to heal."

"What use are ideals, if they are abandoned in hardship? I have failed so often."

One of the squires spoke up quietly. "They say you freed every Fey slave in the Roman Empire."

He blinked away his tears and grimaced. "Doing so only stoked the hatred against them."

The cliffwalker shook his head. "No, Sir. Hate is hate. If it exists, it will stoke itself. You at least broke their chains so they could flee or fight it."

He looked up at Galehaut. "Has everyone heard that story?"

He smiled enigmatically.

Gawain hung his head for a moment. "Yes. I did that."

"They say you broke the siege at the last castle in Kent, single-handed, with the Sword of the First Kings," the squire pressed on bravely. "That they found you with your hand split in two, because you had resisted the Sword's curse." 

He exhaled, disapproving of the general direction this was going, but he nodded again. 

"Show the kid your scar," Galehaut encouraged. "It is an impressive one."

He grimaced. "Scars are not impressive."

"That one is," he insisted. 

He frowned, but rolled up his right sleeve and offered a view in the dim firelight.

The squires moved around the fire to see it and one was brave enough to turn his arm and have a look at the other side. He whistled appreciatively. "How did this even heal?"

"It's the work of my sister, Nimue." He rolled his sleeve down and took his hand back, shooing them back to their places. "She may be the only person with the skill and magic to heal wounds caused by that damned Sword."

"They say it speaks," the second squire said reverently.

"It does. It whispers promises into your mind, and once it's reached into you, it can inflict pain to control you." He stared into the campfire. "That scar is how far it was able to reach into me."

They were silent for a long, dreadful minute. Then Galehaut asked softly, "What did it promise you?"

"The power to force peace on the entire isle." He rubbed absently at his sword arm, at the scar.

"You didn't want it?"

"It was lying," he answered a different question. "It would not have been the right kind of peace. It would not have lasted. Everything that it promises is corrupted. It keeps the letter of its promises and not the spirit. It gave my sister incredible power, but it bound her to a lake. It would have done similarly to me."

Galehaut admired him. "My wise king."

"Your paranoid king," he corrected with chagrin. "The Sword whispered the same treacherous orders as my instincts, and it was difficult to tell them apart. He poked at the fire with a stick. "If I hadn't had so much practice denying my heart, it might have succeeded."

"Useful in war," his betrothed told him, "but fatal in peace."

"Yes," he laughed bitterly. "Precisely that."

The following silence wrapped around them so completely that they parted to their tents and went to sleep still bound in it. 

\--

Gawain woke in the darkness to a hand over his mouth. He reached for Galehaut instinctually, but another hand grabbed his wrist and jerked it back. He struggled, but a body pressed against his, pinning him. Before he could properly panic, a familiar voice whispered in his ear.

"G'wain stop. It's me." 

He blinked in the darkness, but he would recognize the smell of that body for the rest of his life. He stilled. The hand over his mouth disappeared, but the one on his wrist tugged, pulled him to his feet and to follow outside.

The fire had gone out. The squires were both bound and gagged, both looked terrified. And pulling him away from the scene, cloaked in grey with skin and eyes gleaming pale in the moonlight--

"Lancelot, stop," he whispered, digging in his heels and stopping them.

"We can get away," he insisted. "We don't have to kill them. They won't catch us before we get to the border." 

"I'm not leaving."

He stopped pulling finally and turned back to regard him with confusion tinged with horror. "Gawain, please."

He crossed his arms and stuck out his jaw a little.

"Arthur will defend us. You don't have to let that giant paw you anymore, you can come home--"

"This is my home," he said out loud, knowing it would be enough to wake the sleeping king.

Lancelot looked to the tent, skittish. He reached for his sword hilt, but there was no sound from the tent to indicate he would need it. He looked back to Gawain. "Then you really… those letters, those were really from you?"

He nodded.

"You really left us like that. Your family. Me." His face veered first into horror, then disgust, then anger. "Why would you?"

"Because they accepted me. He accepted me. Healed me. He cares for me as an equal, Lancelot."

He pressed into his space and grabbed his arms. "I gave you everything that you needed. We were good together. You trusted me to do for you. You needed me. We fought together. We were to be joined. So you're going to have to do better than that."

The tent opened, there were two hard footsteps, then a hand closed over the back of Lancelot's neck, lifted him away from Gawain, and gave him a light throw, as one might a bothersome cat.

Lancelot landed on his feet with his usual grace and drew both of his swords. He locked eyes with Galehaut and squared up.

"You should stand back from him," Galehaut told him airily. "He's very dangerous."

"Let him go," Lancelot told him.

Galehaut raised an eyebrow. "He is free to go, or to stay, as he pleases. He has been free to leave for several months."

The ash man shook his head slowly. "You have something over him."

"I told you wrong before," Gawain cut in. "I'm staying because of Galehaut. But I left you for me."

He stared at Galehaut. 

"Put your weapons away," Gawain told him. "No one is going to fight."

He hesitated, but complied. They stood next to the burned out fire and regarded each other warily. A long, tense silence stretched between them.

"Arthur agreed to let me seek you. The whole court wants you back."

Bitterness bubbled out of somewhere dark. "They didn't miss me before the war. None of you really did. You only came to me until I couldn't give you what you needed anymore. Arthur only came to me when it was time to fight again."

"That's not true," Lancelot rejected. "I love you. We all love you."

"Where's the fight?" Gawain asked.

He clenched his jaw.

"That's what I thought." He shook his head. "I'm done trying to earn approval like that. I'm done bleeding for it. I am worth too much to keep offering my suffering for a little kindness."

"What does any of that have to do with me?" He pressed.

"Nothing," he admitted, staying a growling Galehaut with a gentle hand. "It has nothing to do with you."

"So why would you leave me?" he hissed insistently. His face twisted with how hurt he was. "I caught you when you stumbled. I took over for you when you were too weak to even rest. I turned my entire life inside out because of your words."

Gawain raised his chin a degree. "You didn't turn your life inside out to regain control of it? To reclaim your purpose and rejoin your people? To do the right thing?"

He paused to work out what he wanted to say. "At first, no. I didn't. I did it for your kindness and your acceptance. Then I… then I understood what I had been missing." All the fight seemed to run out of him with this realization, and he slumped. "Gawain, what have I done? Please tell me. I will make whatever amends, but you cannot leave me without telling me what I've done to deserve this."

Gawain pressed his mouth closed and sighed. This was going nowhere. "Lancelot, I can't tell you that you didn't do anything, but I can tell you that you didn't do anything wrong."

The moonlight caught for a half-second on a tear. "That doesn't make any sense."

He crossed the space between them, ignoring all the warnings in his mind that it was a bad idea. His former lover, his Lancelot, was hurting, and as confusing as it was for his emotional state, he needed to comfort him. "You were as a bandage over a very deep wound. You didn't hurt me; you helped keep me together and keep me safe when I didn't have the time to heal. Then when I should have had the opportunity, the wound clung so tightly to you that I couldn't heal, because you were so close to me. We had grown together in an unhealthy way."

Lancelot sniffled and folded forward, gathering him close and resting his head on his shoulder. "G'wain, no."

Gawain shushed him and rocked him gently, rubbing his back. "I know. I'm sorry this is happening. I'm so sorry."

One of the bound squires made a soft noise of pity.

Galehaut kept a close eye on Gawain but moved to free the squires, who quickly set to work relighting the camp fire.

The king cleared his throat awkwardly. When the two fey knights parted, he addressed Lancelot, but kept careful watch on Gawain for any signal that he might be uncomfortable. "It's late. No one is going anywhere for a few hours. Might I suggest you stay here until morning, and then decide your course? It is never wise to wander while thus afflicted."

Lancelot sniffled, but nodded. "That is--" he started in a very small voice, then cleared his throat and continued with more composure. "That is very kind of you. I accept your hospitality."

Galehaut nodded him towards the fire. "Get warm. I have some whiskey here somewhere. You two have much to discuss."

Gawain followed Galehaut into their tent, and spoke in a low whisper. "I am sorry for this."

"You needn't be," he replied, though his tone was strained. "You didn't bring him here. And… you didn't leave with him." He looked up at Gawain from where he had crouched to rummage in a crate. 

"Oh! Oh lover. No." He closed the gap between them and clutched Galehaut's head to his chest. "I am never leaving you."

Galehaut choked back what could have been a sob, and wrapped his arms around him. "I was so afraid, when you went to him. I am sorry, I know you are a loyal soul, I just… it's clear that you love him."

Gawain kissed the top of his head and held him close. "I did. In a way, I still do. But that doesn't mean I don't love you."

He stood and gathered up Gawain as if he weren't even heavy, and cradled him close to his chest. "I am quite mad for love of you. And he is one of the ones who hurt you. I want to tear him apart for that."

He wiped tears away from his betrothed's face. "He didn't mean to do it. It wasn't his fault. We were young and broken people."

He reigned in his sobbing and put him down on the crate, then kissed him ungracefully, desperately. "If he hurts you again, I will break him in half."

"I know," Gawain smiled. "And I know I am yours. Trust in me. I am yours."

"I trust you more than anyone." He held him for a moment longer, then let him go and tried to compose himself. "I'm sorry."

He smiled fondly. "Never be sorry for how much we love."

Galehaut managed a small smile for him, then took a deep breath. He let Gawain climb down from the crate and went back to rummaging through it until he found the whiskey. They braced themselves and went back to sit around the fire with their strange guest.

Lancelot stared at them both with a lingering gaze, expression flat. Gawain supposed he had heard everything. He took the bottle of whiskey and drank, then passed it back. "So. What do I tell them?"

Gawain considered this for a moment. "Tell them the truth. That the letters were genuine, and that I am safe and well here. That they are welcome to visit."

"You should invite them to the wedding," Galehaut offered shortly.

He closed his eyes in exasperation, but he could still hear the creak of leather as Lancelot tensed. "Yes, of course." When he opened his eyes, he shot a warning look at Galehaut, who didn't bother to look guilty. "There will be a more formal invitation."

Lancelot toyed with the silver band around his own finger, then with a pained frown he twisted it off and tossed it into the fire. He accepted the bottle of whiskey back from Galehaut, a small mercy and even smaller apology. He took a drink. "He takes care of you. You want for nothing?"

Gawain nodded. "He attends me admirably."

"And he fucks adequately?"

He sighed tolerantly. "Lancelot, I know you're hurt--"

"We fuck constantly," Galehaut told him. "It's a topic of much conversation in court, how much we fuck. We are quite adventurous and we've fucked in almost every room in the castle."

"It's a wonder he can still walk," Lancelot feigned surprise, passing the bottle back to Galehaut.

"We don't do it that way. I'm much too big, you understand." Galehaut took the next drink, then set the bottle down and stood up.

Taking this as a challenge, Lancelot stood up too. "I don't care how big you are, I'll have a go at you. This is outrageous."

The king raised his eyebrows. "Oh. Alright, well, them, let me just leave my knife here and we can have fisticuffs. Put your blades down, little man."

Lancelot quickly began the arduous task of extracting the ridiculous number of weapons he had strapped to his person, making eye contact the entire time. When he was standing in a small circle of stacked weapons, he took a broad step to the side, and spread his hands. "A dagger? Is that all you carry?"

"You did wake me in the middle of the night. That was my pillow dagger." He raised his fists.

"I should've killed you in your sleep," Lancelot snarled. "Your defense was pathetic."

"I don't need anyone to defend me," he snapped back.

"But he deserves an army."

Galehaut froze, exhaled as if struck.

Lancelot took two steps forward and slammed his fist into his stomach.

"Wait," he ignored the strike, which bounced uselessly off his hardened abdominals. "You're right."

Lancelot shook his hand and made a face. He tried again to punch him in the side, under his guard, but it gained exactly as much ground as the first strike had. "Of course I'm right. You have no idea how to protect him. You have no right to--"

Galehaut waved one arm, brushing him off. "Stop. Where is he?"

Lancelot stepped back. Looked around.

One squire remained, heel of his hand pressed against his forehead and other hand crossed over his chest. 

"Where--?" Galehaut started.

"He's in the woods. Probably not far," the squire reported. "Keran went after him. You probably shouldn't."

Lancelot started forward anyway. 

"I meant both of you shouldn't," the squire insisted, getting in his path. 

The ash man and the half giant exchanged nervous glances. "We're… we're in a lot of trouble, aren't we?" Lancelot said.

The squire scoffed at him. "Wow."


	10. Persephone's Nightmare

Galehaut folded up to sit next to the fire and wait. 

Lancelot looked at him, then at the squire, then at the woods, and finally back to him. "You're not going after him?"

He raised an eyebrow. "He's a grown sky man, he didn't walk away because he wants to be with people."

He frowned harder. "He shouldn't just walk into the darkness like that. He could be hurt."

Galehaut tipped his head to the side. "I'm not at all aware of the less famous aspects of his past, but does it seem to you that he would just wander off into danger unprepared?"

"Yes, that sounds exactly like something he would do." Lancelot crossed his arms over his chest and paced around the campfire. "He reaches for death at every opportunity."

"He hasn't for several months," the half-giant corrected. "He has had many opportunities but never sought to die since he came to be with me. He will come back when he is ready to deal with us."

He stopped pacing. His spine stiffened. He watched Galehaut carefully. "He… hasn't… asked you to kill him?"

"What?" Now Galehaut looked horrified, which made Lancelot feel a little better.

"To kill him. He was constantly after me to kill him. I made him promise that to me, that I would be the one to do it." He shifted back as Galehaut shifted forward, in case the much larger man was about to swing at him-- and it looked like he just might. "So that he wouldn't kill himself," he qualified. "So that he would be honest with me about his state of mind."

A storm of emotions crossed his face, first horror, then rage, then disgust, then rage again, then a deep and terrible sorrow. "No. Gawain never asked such a thing of me. After he began speaking again, he seemed so happy."

Lancelot settled back on his heels. "Why did he stop speaking?"

Galehaut's eyes peered across the fire at him, heavy and dark and full of anger. "You should be able to tell me the answer to that. He hadn't spoken for months before the battle. I thought it was the war-sickness, but now that I hear ignorance of such, vented in your own voice, I'm not sure anymore. I had suspected it might be a bad arrangement, but now."

He sank to the ground to sit, not trusting his legs to hold him upright anymore. "Bad arrangement?"

"You hurt him, Lancelot," he growled, physically shaking. "And you have the gall to come here after months of no letters and no visits and demand to know why he left you. If it wouldn't hurt him so much, I would destroy you so that no piece of you could be identified."

Lancelot stared at him, dumbfounded. "He-- I-- oh…" It felt like the air was being squeezed from his chest. "I didn't… We never had that kind of relationship. I didn't know he wanted something like that."

"Something like--!" Galehaut boomed. He got his anger under control and asked, "What kind of relationship did you have, then?"

He ran his fingers through his hair like claws, pulling fiercely. "He wanted me to take over decisions for him, and to do for him physically and mentally so that he could rest. He was always so tired and full of grief." He bowed his head and exhaled slowly, inhaled slowly. Tried not to panic. "He gave me control, which I have never had before, even over myself. He gave me hope and acceptance. I thought I was giving him what he wanted. He said that was what he wanted."

Galehaut watched him break down with controlled confusion. He shoved his anger down; now was not the time. Not when he had this thread that could help him understand his lover better, if he would just follow it. Letting his jealousy lead him had been a mistake. He wouldn't repeat it. "He hasn't spoken much about the war time, or about anything at all before the war. He said that people always needed him to fight and work and bleed, but after the fight was over, he was always alone. Why did you leave him alone? Why didn't you--" he grimaced and forced down the anger cleaning indignantly at the inside of his chest. "Why didn't you love him?"

Lancelot turned away as if he'd been struck. "After the war, he seemed so angry all the time. I thought he needed some peace and time alone, especially from me and my problems. I don't exactly have any experience with being a good person. He's… he's my first example."

They sat in silence for a long time, before Galehaut found the strength to extend an olive branch. "What's your story, then?"

He pulled his legs up in front of him and rested his arms on his knees. He sighed. "The church took me from my home when I was very small. Raised me to be a killer. Convinced me that to be fey was to be a demon. I killed a lot of innocent people. I hunted him through the early years of the war, when we were both young. I… I killed him, if you can believe it. I stabbed him and gave him over to be tortured, and before he died, he made me see that I was wrong, and that I had to at least try to be better." He ran a hand through his curls again, a nervous gesture. "When he was resurrected and returned to us, I thought he was for me. I believed that helping him would be my atonement. We got physical quickly, and I…" he stopped speaking and stared into the flames, searching for the trail of his epiphany there. 

Galehaut waited patiently. It seemed like the least he could do.

"I took him apart to make him process his grief, so he could make it through the war, but he never stopped wanting to die. I believed it was because of the strain of the war. I thought if I pressed too hard, he would simply give up. He was always so close to giving up." He looked up at Galehaut, eyes shining with tears, and the streaks on his face were as shadows of them, cast by the moonlight. "You saved him from that. Thank you."

He nodded. "Thank you for keeping him alive so that I could meet him at all." He stood and offered his hand to Lancelot.

Lancelot stood and shook it. "I want to do better by him, if he will let me. Not to take him away from you, but… to be a better friend. I hope that you won't… that I won't…"

"I'd like that to happen," he said, surprising himself with how much he meant it.

"I hope," Lancelot added quietly, "that you might teach me how."

Galehaut considered this. "I will help you however I can, because you seem earnest enough. I don't know how much time we will have together. It depends on your king and mine."

\--

Gawain returned to the camp as the sun rose, with the squire trailing behind him. His shoulders were squared and his jaw set, but something dragged at the corners of his eyes and the tempo of his breath. He stood and regarded them both evenly.

"Gawain, we are sorry," Galehaut told him, not rising but shifting to kneel. "Please forgive us both. I was angry and jealous. We both were."

Gawain sighed and looked to Lancelot. "How much time do we have," he asked with a thin, ragged voice. "When will whatever army it is arrive?"

"No," Galehaut begged. "Gawain, no."

Lancelot was aghast.

"I would like, if there is time, one more day at home?" His voice threatened to break at the end.

Galehaut swept him into an embrace and whispered into his hair, but he was stiff and cold and did not react.

"There's no army," Lancelot lied. "No battle is coming."

"You said--"

"I was mistaken," he replied. "You should go home. Maybe I could finally visit you there?"

Gawain leaned against Galehaut at last. He lifted his arms to cling to his betrothed. "Yes," he said after a long moment. "Yes, I would like that."


	11. Prometheus's agreement with the vultures

They rode together to the castle. Galehaut watched his betrothed closely for any indication of how he was feeling or thinking, but he was as cold and as expressionless as stone. At first he thought it was because of the fight, but he rarely held a mood so long without telling him its cause. The longer he was silent, the more Galehaut worried.

"Tell me about the lad, Percival," Galehaut invited Lancelot, eager to break the silence.

Lancelot looked surprised. "He is well. He grows ever taller and more foul-mouthed. He will turn seventeen this year, and he is very concerned with the opinions of young women."

Galehaut smiled. "A rough age, but an exciting one. Has he courted any damsel in particular?"

"Yes. A faun girl who runs circles around him in conversation. She seems unconcerned by his lack of manners somehow. Her parents are pleased she has the attention of a knight." Lancelot watched Gawain closely. "He hasn't asked her yet. He is waiting for you to come home and bless the match."

Gawain's eyes widened for a moment, then grew even more distant.

"And what news of this Pym I have heard about?"

"She is progressing well as a healer. She drinks like a raider these days. No suitors, and she seeks none, though I wonder if it's because everyone is a bit terrified of her. She spends a lot of time with our terrifying queen."

Galehaut chuckled, watching Gawain's complete lack of reaction. "This sounds like the Pym I have heard so much about."

"She asked me to convey her love and care, Gawain," Lancelot continued.

More distance. "Please thank her for it. May Dannu keep her."

"Everyone would like to see you," he pressed.

"Then everyone should visit," he replied in a tone that ended the subject. He let Gringolet carry him away from them a little faster.

"Gawain, stop," Lancelot ordered.

Galehaut's eyes narrowed and he physically restrained himself from reaching over and knocking the ash man from his horse. Instead, he shot him a warning look that could have melted flesh.

Lancelot held up a hand to steady him.

Gawain slowed to let them catch up. His face was still a stone but his eyes positively blazed with anger. He ground his teeth.

"Tell me what's in your mind," he ordered. When he received no response, he reached over and grasped Gawain's forearm firmly. He was rewarded with a faltering expression and eye contact, but there was something behind the hazel that he hoped never to see again.

Fear.

Gawain tried to speak, but he couldn't seem to find his voice.

"That's enough," Galehaut's voice rumbled instead. "Release him."

Lancelot did, unwilling to risk this new kind of truce for the indignity of being commanded by his ex's new lover. He shoved his pride down and watched for what he would do next.

He lowered his voice to nearly a whisper. "The weather is so fair that we will reach the ford before the tide comes in. Do you want to ride ahead with me and let the others catch up?"

Gawain looked up at him with relief and gratitude.

He nodded, then looked over him to Lancelot. "Stay with the escort," he told him. Then he and Gawain gave the horses more rein and a gentle heel, and marched ahead of the train. 

They urged the horses into a canter. Galehaut only slowed them when they were well away from the train and in no danger of being heard. Even then, he did not speak, but only waited.

After five or so minutes of riding in quiet contemplation, Gawain began a sentence in the middle of a thought. "It used to be the only way I could feel safe enough to feel anything but anger," he admitted quietly. "I had been responsible for so many, and for so long, that letting go of any control felt like a threat."

"Forgive me: you gave that control to a broken person."

He chuckled humorlessly. "Yes. He had been with me in some way or another for ten years. He was the only one who never gave up or died in all that time. I don't regret convincing him to join our side of the fight, nor do I regret the opportunity to heal that it provided him. I do regret that we were unable to give him the control over himself that he needed, at first." _I wasn't strong enough to help him in the way that he needed_.

Galehaut's creeping feeling of dread began to show on his face. "So you gave him control over you, instead. Did you do it for you, or for him?"

He shrugged. "Can't it be both?"

"Did it make you happy?"

He scoffed. "What's 'happy'? We were fighting a war for existence. There wasn't time or energy for 'happy.'"

Galehaut nodded sympathetically. "Do you want me to send him home?"

He thought about it. Sighed. "Not until he tells us about whatever king is coming to do battle with Arthur next."

"They're not your responsibility," he insisted. "You hold no lands in fief to Arthur, and you owe them no debts. Not after all you have done."

He opened his mouth to reply, but Galehaut interrupted him.

"As magnificent as you are in battle, and I have seen you best ten of my men at a time, I have also seen your scars and the lines of you change when you think of violence. You bled too much for that kingdom for it not to be yours, for them to give it to a boy king and then expect more from you whenever he makes mistakes--"

"I chose Arthur."

Galehaut stared at him. "What?"

"I was in no condition to build anything and I wanted to rest. He is younger and still has hope. His heart is in the right place, even when he lacks wisdom."

"All the more reason to let him learn to defend himself."

He let his chin rest on his chest and sighed. "They are still my family. And it is still my home." He smiled grimly. "There is probably more of my blood in the soil there than there is in my body."

Galehaut exhaled as if he'd been punched in the gut. 

He winced. "I'm sorry. That was supposed to be funny."

They rode in silence for a few minutes. "What of your promise to me?"

Gawain looked over at him, surprised. He felt like the lowest creature in all the world. "All promises I have given you, I plan to keep."

"We can't be joined if you're a corpse."

His heart skipped a beat. "You still want to be joined with me, after all of this trouble?"

Galehaut mirrored his look of surprise, then it turned dark. "I am not them. I will not leave you because you are difficult. If I wanted easy, I would not have fallen in love with you."

He exhaled roughly, then inhaled like a man saved from drowning. He looked up again when Galehaut put a hand on his back. "I'm… I'm sorry I need so much reassurance, it's not that I don't trust you--"

"Shh," Galehaut told him. "I know. I know what it's like. I'm here. I love you. I'm going to love you forever. I'm not going anywhere."

They rode the rest of the way side by side while Gawain worked through his fear. Galehaut patiently reassured him until it was done.


	12. The Sun and The Moon

The crossing was uneventful, comforting in its routine even in the face of its dangers. They were met, disarmed and disarmored, the horses were taken to the stables to be cared for, and they were shuffled off to be scrubbed and washed themselves. Gawain slipped into Galehaut's room and they stole an hour together, pretending the events of the woods hadn't happened at all.

When Galehaut was certain Gawain was calm and content, he bade him stay in the royal apartments and he went to offer hospitality to Lancelot himself. He found the ash man standing, bewildered, in the hall shared between all genders, surrounded by curious alderpeople firing off questions and hoping for news from Logres. He sent them away and steered him out towards the courtyard. 

"They mean well. We don't get much news, secluded as we are," he excused them.

"You are only a few days' ride from Kent. Do people really pass this way so seldom?"

_ You'd know if you'd ever tried to pass this way, _ he did not say. Instead, he smiled a thin smile. "The roads to the east are subject to rain. We'd build better roads if we had more visitors from that direction."

"You'd have more visitors if you had better roads," he shot back.

"Road conditions did not stop my army and it should not have stopped you."

They stared at each other coldly.

"Let me show you our grounds. I think you will find them likable." Galehaut gestured with an open hand to the path up the rock.

Lancelot sighed and went before him up the stone path. They made their way around the narrow walk and the flower-draped cliffside, to the terraced yards with their gardens, and finally up to the round pen and the sunny top of the island. "I appreciate the trust you have placed in me," he said at last. "There are not many who would voluntarily walk with me anywhere, much less alone. I am… not generally considered pleasant company. This must be especially bothersome due to our circumstance. Thank you."

"You are an interesting set of contradictions," Galehaut replied politely. 

"This place is very defensible," he praised it. "I had wondered why it is called 'The Distant Isle,' as it is not very distant. But if you didn't want someone here, then even if they stood on the opposite bank, the castle may as well be a thousand miles away."

He nodded. "That's the way we like it."

"It's a wonder that you became such a warrior when all you need do is sit in your fortress and wait for any enemy to die of old age."

He smiled thinly again. "I did not become a warrior to defend my home. I became a warrior because the world is full of injustices and the innocent need all the help they may."

"Do you think Gawain is one of those innocents?"

"He used to be." Then he added, with a significant look, "We  _ all _ used to be."

Lancelot retreated rather than launching another verbal attack. "What did… what did he tell you about me?"

Galehaut smiled sadly. "You know, I couldn't figure out who you were, at first. He talked about Sir Lancelot, the flower of knighthood, the fierce survivor rescued from the clutches of enemy brainwashing. Then he spoke of his former lover, the shieldmate, and as many bittersweet stories he had about you, he had an equal number of panic attacks." He shook his head. "I feel like I still don't know who you are, not really."

He crossed his arms and mulled this over. "I know even less about you," he admitted. "A half-giant known for tearing people in two. Lives like a recluse at the edge of Wales. Trades in salt and lyme, so comfortably wealthy. Educated. A gifted strategist. The enemy."

"We are not enemies," he corrected. "It's been months."

"You have a lot of alderpersons in your court, as richly dressed as your nobles, which is to say not very," He continued. "And women in your guard. And there was no bowing or curtseying at all. The low-born and high-born sat and spoke together about affairs of state." His eyes narrowed. "Did you let Gawain restructure your government?"

He sighed. "A little. Yes. But not all of that was new. Can you imagine the kind of revolt there would be, if we let him and his 'mandate by the governed' loose all at once?"

"He'd bring the roof down around our ears," Lancelot agreed, but his fondness was tinted with a certain sadness now. "When did you propose to be joined?"

He winced. "You  _ are _ sharp. Three weeks ago. We were to be joined under the full moon of August, in the tradition of his people. Here, at the highest point of the island, in the tradition of mine."

Lancelot shifted uneasily. "I didn't know his people had any particular wedding traditions. At least, none that he would want to bother with."

"He's a hopeless romantic."

"Is he?" The question was honest. 

"Well, when did you ask him to be joined?"

He paused. "I didn't."

"When I met with you and the royal--"

"We were to be joined, but I didn't ask him."

Galehaut tipped his head to the side. "When did he ask you?"

"He didn't." Lancelot drifted over to the round pen and sat on the lower crossbeam of the fence. "When he was recovering from the scouring at the castle, I put a ring on his finger."

Galehaut raised his eyebrows, expecting a story. Gawain's response. The happy ending.

He shook his head. "It wasn't like that. He was in a coma for weeks. We had to get the government in place or the absence of one would have invited the next challenger to wipe out the fey and everything left in the countryside. I stayed for as long as I could, but when he didn't wake up, I had to trust that Nimue would take care of him." He looked up at Galehaut, the birthmarks of his face emphasizing his expression of dread. "I was going to return there, just as soon as…"

"Were you?" The question was honest.

He scuffed a shoe against the dirt. "...no. I waited for him to come to me. He always came to me when he needed me. At least I thought he did."

Galehaut stood quietly nearby, waiting for him to process.

"I should apologize to him," Lancelot decided. "Before I go home. And promise to visit, and bring Percival, if we survive this next crisis."

He sighed again, knowing he was about to regret this. "You have a new enemy. Maybe I can help avert this disaster. I owe you no debt nor fealty, but. Let's call it a wedding gift."

He scoffed. "It would be a kingly wedding gift indeed, but he also may never forgive you. It may be better if he doesn't find out at all, I… I don't know. I don't know his heart like I thought I did."

"Let me decide, then," he offered, voice soft. "Perhaps I can spare some soldiers. Perhaps I can supply your armies. Who is coming?"

Lancelot's hands tightened into fists. "King Lot of Orkney and Lothian. His father."

Galehaut's back and neck popped audibly as he straightened and turned, pacing away.

"Where are you going?" He demanded, fearing he was going to tell Gawain.

His voice boomed and echoed off the stone, too heavy to be taken away by the wind. "To fetch my sword."


	13. The Service of the Body

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW

Lancelot followed him from one end of the island to the other, helpfully providing information as Galehaut gave orders and started planning. He would ride out in three days with as many soldiers as could fight, minus a force of ten thousand to remain on the shores in case the King of Ireland got brave in their absence. Luckily it was only a three day ride, so if the worst should happen, the cavalry could be quickly returned.

They went back and forth on the issue of whether to tell Gawain or to simply lock him in a tower until Galehaut returned-- Lancelot's idea, and damn tempting-- but in the end, they agreed to tell him and let him decide, because he was going to find out anyway. And even if they did lock him in a tower, he would probably talk someone into letting him out.

Galehaut let him enjoy the rest of the afternoon in peace, then found him in the royal apartments, sat down with him, and tried to make a soft open. "The king marching on Arthur is well known and I mean to lend my army against him, and to go there and fight with them, as a gift to you on the occasion of our wedding." 

"Then I'm going with you," he said. It was a fact.

He threaded his fingers around Gawain's pensively. "I know that you wanted a full moon joining, but I hope that you would agree to be married before the battle. His army is formidable and if something should happen to either of us… I want you in my heart forever. And I want this kingdom to be yours and keep you safe, if I cannot."

"Of course." He studied his relieved reaction. "There's only one king on this ridiculous isle that would make me happy for you to fight. And if I can't strike his head from his shoulders, then I hope you do. And if both of us fall, then I hope someone gets the bastard."

Galehaut sighed in relief. "I thought you might be angry. He is your father, after all…"

He chuckled. "Oh, I am livid, but not with you. The time to work with him has passed."

"You could stay here," he offered. "Look after the kingdom. There's going to be so much violence, and you--"

"I will never let you ride into battle alone unless some wound prevents me," he insisted.

Galehaut sighed. "Gawain, a wound of the mind is still a wound."

Gawain frowned, his mouth pulling wide in annoyance. "Lot is the reason for many of my mind's wounds. Driving a sword through his heart would mend mine." 

He nodded, then chuckled.

"What?"

"You being bloodthirsty does things to me. I imagine you in a suit of armor with a sword in your hand, and it makes me throb like nothing else can." He blushed. "I'm sorry, this is a serious matter and it deserves my full attention."

Gawain grinned. "No, no, go on. Throb, you say? And what else? I've got a sword in my hand in this scenario?"

"Mm," he agreed. "We're both armored and armed, ready for a battle. Anything could happen. We could die. But I tell you that before we die, I want to hear you sing in pleasure one more time, and I take off your armor piece by piece, but it doesn't make you more vulnerable. It makes you even stronger and the light that is you is freed, blinding."

Gawain hummed appreciatively, and wiggled his trousers down to his knees, letting Galehaut pull them the rest of the way down. He put his hands in his braes and pulled himself free, gave himself a languid stroke. "Well, go on, brave knight. You've got me undressed, what would you do with me? Are we in the armory, surrounded by metal and leather?"

"No," he growled, kneeling before Gawain's chair like it were a throne. He reverently ran his palms along his legs, up to his hips, and settled his weight on his forearms. "We're on the hill before all the armies of the world, and all our armies are behind us. And you are impossibly strong and bright before them, and they are cowed by your perfection. I take you into my mouth and show them how you should be honored." He took over the work of Gawain's hand with his mouth, giving him an insistent and powerful suck, then bobbing forward enthusiastically.

"Oh fuck," Gawain moaned. "In front of all these people?"

Galehaut hummed the affirmative in his low, powerful tone that vibrated into his lower spine.

"I don't know that I could remain standing when you honor me this way. You are so good, so hot." He fondly ran his fingers through Galehaut's hair, lightly scratching against his scalp but being careful not to pull, and definitely not impeding the driving tempo of his movements.

Galehaut pulled off of his dick with one last hard suck that made him groan. "You'll have to remain standing, because you have to get my armor off before you can put this magnificent tool in me." He rose up and let Gawain tear his trousers open and haul them down. "Besides," he said as he let Gawain turn him around and bend him over the arm of the chair, "there's someone to help hold you up in this scenario."

There was the sound of a clink as Gawain set a small bottle of oil down on the table nearby, then the slick sounds of his hand as he oiled himself up. "Oh? You need another person to satisfy you? I must not be enough of a knight for someone as mighty as you, my king. Maybe you need this whole army, but let me be the one to command them."

Galehaut grunted as an eager, well-oiled finger worked into him, preparing the way. He pressed back into it. "I hear the things you say in the throes of pleasure. I've opened you with my hands and touched the deepest places of you."

Gawain moaned impatiently. "Fuck. Your voice is… you better hold that thought until I'm inside you or I won't make it."

He chuckled, mostly a growl.

He parted the muscular ass and guided himself in, pushing gently but insistently past the tight resistance and into the intense heat of his body. He paused there, waiting for his partner to adjust, and moved his hands to his narrow hips, stroked along the hard muscles of his legs. "Hn. Still feel like you need another cock in the mix?"

Galehaut growled lowly and relaxed his body, taking him ever further in. Then, with all the control he could muster, he clenched his core muscles and gave him a firm squeeze. 

Gawain groaned and grasped his hips again.

He grinned. "I don't need any other cock in me, no," he reassured him. "But you? I know you miss it. What I can't give you." He rocked back against him gently, signalling that he was ready.

Gawain grimaced and drew back a little, pressed in and rolled his hips, then set a steadier tempo. He rubbed circles into Galehaut's sides with his thumbs, then into his back. "Don't need it," he murmured, "I am happy to enjoy you." He ran a soothing hand along his spine, watching the muscles of his back shifting. His other lovers had been a mix of lean and strong, scarred and innocent, but Galehaut's body would always be a marvel to him. He was resplendent in his musculature, strong not in the way a lion or a bear was strong for survival, but as if being strong were as much his right as his voice or his breath. His scars weren't references to a troubled past of violent necessity, but decorations of past duels and trials, proof of his glorious worth. Yes, he enjoyed Galehaut very much.

"Imagine it, though," he murmured back, taking himself in hand and matching Gawain's tempo. "You driving into me, in front of all the armies of the world, and then someone bends you over me, and gives worship to your body--"

Gawain jerked and muttered a wordless warning. 

"Yes," he encouraged, clenching carefully around him again. "Yes, my king, giving you everything you want. Everything you deserve. Elevating you. Filling you."

"I'm going to fill you, if you go on like this," he panted, rolling his hips again. "Oh fuck, yes. I do want it. I want it."

"Then you shall have it," he rumbled, pressing back and stroking himself almost violently. "Anything for my Gawain, anything. He'll take over, wrap his arms around you and touch you while you touch me, drive you forward with his body, drive you into mine, growing harder and fuller until he finds that place--"

Gawain grunted helplessly as the sensation and his imagination-- Galehaut's imagination, damn him-- overtook his self control, and he erupted with a sustained vocalization. His partner came helpfully as he did, sparing him the embarrassment of having been outlasted. When he twitched his last, he pulled out and let Galehaut turn, slide into the chair, and pull Gawain on top of him. 

They lay together panting for some time as their bodies cooled. Galehaut grabbed a wool blanket from the basket next to the chair and arranged it over them. He wrapped his arms around Gawain in the way he knew he liked, but would never admit. Then he pressed kisses into his hair. "Who was it?" He asked gently.

"Hnrgh?" Gawain responded articulately.

"When you were inside me," he elaborated, "who was inside you?"

He remained silent.

"Was it who I think?"

He sighed, realizing he didn't have the energy left to evade the question. "It was at first. Then it was Galen."

Galehaut stroked his arm and back soothingly. "Who is Galen? Was he your first?"

"No," he whispered. Then he drew in a deeper breath. "My first-- and second-- were an older couple from my village. He was having difficulty performing, and she wanted to conceive."

He smiled a little. "Your first experience was as service dick?"

He sighed, gritting his teeth.

"That's heroic," he told him, giving him a small squeeze. "My brave knight, helping others."

Gawain fidgeted a little. "You don't mind?" 

"Still don't," he confirmed. "Tell me more. Who else has worshipped at the altar of your body? Who are my fellow devout? Ah--" he grinned. "I shall call it the Brotherhood of Galehaut. We will be your first order of knights when you are crowned."

"You're an odd duck," he replied honestly. He tilted his head back so he could gauge Galehaut's reaction better. 

Galehaut watched him steadily, kindly. Honestly.

"You really don't mind!" he realized.

"Really, I don't," he promised. "Well. I mind the ones who hurt you. They take up a lot of space in my mind, in fact, and I sometimes think about how best to murder them."

Gawain smiled sadly. "It would take a long time," he said hoarsely.

Galehaut brushed his thumb along his cheekbone, gently collecting a tear. He tasted it, then took Gawain's face in both of his, and kissed him fiercely. "No one will hurt you again without first having to kill me. Do you understand?"

He licked his swollen lips and nodded. His pupils were blown wide, his eyelids heavy. It felt like Galehaut had opened the lock that kept his soul closed, with nothing more than promises of love and protection. Who in his life had ever promised him those?

"Are you going to tell me about the others?" He challenged, drawing him down to relax against his chest again.

It took a long time of Gawain marveling at Galehaut before he could gather the words to answer the question. "Thirteen men on the ship from Britain to Rome. I had no choice. Then a gang in Persia, when I killed their champion, forced me with the handle of my own sword."

"Those don't count," Galehaut told him, but held him tighter against the memory. "Those weren't making love."

"Galen put me back together, body and mind. He was the first that loved me, in spite of my history and inexperience and how broken my body was when we met."

Gawain couldn't see it from where Galehaut held him against his chest, but the storm on Galehaut's face eased. "He was good to you?"

"So good. Only good. He taught me everything I know about pleasure, the way you taught me everything I know about love."

"What happened to him?"

"He died for me."

Galehaut blew out a long breath. "Galen. My first brother."

Gawain sighed against his neck, exhausted.

"Who was your fourth?"

"Lancelot," his voice cracked.

"And then me."

Gawain nodded.

Galehaut shifted and settled his chin against his curls. "Five is not so much. More than a few members of the court would top that in an evening." 

He chuckled. "You make me sound like some inexperienced young squire."

He shrugged, lifting and then dropping him with the rise and fall. "Who am I to say? I thought I was the least experienced person I know, but…"

Gawain quirked at eyebrow. "But what?"

"I think it might be Lancelot," he said honestly. "I believe you may have been his first."

Gawain guffawed.

"What? He moons after you like a lost puppy," he pointed out. "He speaks as if he will never love again, if he can't love you."

"Lancelot taught me some things," he admitted, brushing his fingertips pensively through Galehaut's black chest hair. "He was raised in the company of horny nuns and hornier paladins. I honestly think I bored him most of the time."

"Ah." Galehaut mused over this. "Well, maybe it is me after all."

Gawain laughed. 

"But it was him inside you for a little while, wasn't it?" He brought them back around to the original subject gently. "When I was describing it to you?"

He sighed again. 

"I'm not upset," he encouraged. "It was my idea, remember? This is not a trap. I will never trap you."

"It was him," he admitted. "It was not so long ago that we were together, and I… my body remembers his body. It's not so strange to think of him."

Galehaut rewarded his admission with a gentle kiss. "That is fine. If you needed more than what I could give you. If you still want him."

"No! What?!" He pressed himself into Galehaut's arms, shaking and starting to panic. "No, no--"

He sat up and wrapped around him completely, encompassing his shaking form. "Oh no, Gawain, that's not what I-- no, look, here I am! Here I am. I'm not going anywhere. That's not what I meant."

Gawain clutched him so tightly, it strained his shoulders and Galehaut's ribs.

Galehaut rubbed his back. "Shh, no. I'm not leaving. I'm never leaving." He kissed him and touched him until the shaking subsided, and Gawain found his voice again.

"Fuck. I am sorry." He shuddered.

"Do not be," he told him, still rubbing his broad shoulders. "I should have said that differently. I will never leave you."

"I am sorry to doubt you," he said.

Galehaut kissed him, grounding him. "There. There you are. Is this the last thing? The last weak spot in my king's suit of armor?"

"It might be," he exhaled.

"I meant and, not or," he clarified. "Can you tell why you panicked?"

He shook his head. "No, I… I can't understand it myself."

Galehaut grimaced gently. "You're very close to knowing, aren't you? You are safe here. You will always be safe here. So if you can reach it, try now."

He stilled in his arms, then shivered almost violently. "It is the certainty that everyone will leave, abandon me in life or in death. It is cold, and hungry, and it aches in my chest. It was planted there by my family when they left me in the forest. It grew stronger with every death during the war, and with every proof it received when I was left behind, and with every promise I could not keep, and now it does as it pleases with my heart when I should be made safe by your love."

Galehaut studied the turmoil in his hazel-green eyes. "When I have told you I will never leave you--"

"I do believe you," he swore. "But this thing has lived in my heart for so long. I don't remember living without it." He paused. "Except for when Merlin and Nimue turned me into a tree. Those years were so gentle. Perhaps knowing what it was like to be whole and strong made it impossible to face away from this weakness."

Galehaut grazed his fingertips along Gawain's wide jawline, up to his ear, and then down along his neck. "I will never tire of reassuring you that I love you and will never leave." He leaned up and planted a kiss on his lips. "I love you. I will never leave." Then one on the corner of his mouth. "I love you. I will never leave." 

Gawain smiled and shed a tear that was both relieved and unbearably sad.

Galehaut kissed the tear. "I love you. I will never leave."

"We are both warriors," he began.

He shut him up by kissing him. "I love you. I will never leave. If one of us falls in battle, then we fall together, because your heart is now my heart, and if it stops, then so shall I. And if I fall, you will go into the grave with me, locked forever in the hollow of my chest, in the cavern of my heart, where you have always belonged."

Gawain finally shut up and kissed back.

"I love you," he repeated like a mantra whenever they paused for air. "I will never leave."


	14. A Lot of Shit-Talking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW jokes

King Lot's army pitched their camp from the edge of the forest halfway to the castle, ivory and black banners and tents neatly displayed in perfect lines. Their campfires put narrow little whips of brown and grey into the windless sky. They were not loud enough for voices to carry, nor were they hiding their presence.

They were, Arthur decided, annoyingly calm. He studied them from the tower where his war council gathered to discuss strategy and decide whether to attack immediately or allow a siege. Lancelot had returned minutes ago, a messenger had announced, and would make his way to them directly. 

Just Lancelot. Not Gawain.

Arthur tried not to let his anxiety show. This would be the first battle without his best general, his most dependable ally. Galehaut must not have let him go. And to be fair, if he were in Galehaut's position, he would not have done so either. Lot was a predictable neighbor and Arthur was an unknown element. Galehaut had to keep Gawain as a prisoner to keep Arthur in line, but he would have no such requirement with Lot at the border. Would he keep Gawain, if Lot won? Gift him to the other king as a show of friendship? Execute him?

 _Fuck_ , Arthur thought.

Guinevere touched his elbow and drew him back from the window. "Don't jump. There is news."

He turned and met Lancelot's pale, intense gaze. "How bad?"

"Galehaut is bringing his army," Lancelot reported.

Arthur's knees weakened. "How shall we fight on two fronts?"

"I said that wrong, I apologize," Lancelot stopped him. "Galehaut and Gawain are bringing their army to fight Lot. They are eager to do so."

He blinked. Then he stood up straighter. "That's wonderful news!"

"Yes," Lancelot agreed tonelessly. "Wonderful news."

He hesitated.

Guinevere raised an eyebrow. "There's something else, isn't there?"

Lancelot sighed. "It's complicated."

"When is it not?" Arthur muttered.

"Gawain and Galehaut," he said, meaning to continue, but not finding the words.

"You're kidding me," Guinevere barked, then laughed. "The letters were real? Well, I guess he worked through that war-sickness."

Lancelot frowned. "I'm not certain. But they were joined three days ago, before they left the Distant Isle. Galehaut has made him king. Also king. Co-king?"

"Let's call him the queen," Guinevere decided. 

Lancelot paused. "Alright. So King Galehaut and Queen Gawain should arrive within the day, with a force of, you know, that just doesn't sound right."

"It really doesn't," Arthur agreed. "But it's good news all the same. We just have to hold out here for a day, and hope Lot doesn't have anything up his sleeve."

"He will want to talk first," Lancelot's voice dropped low and developed a vicious edge.

Arthur nodded. 

"You've dealt with him before," Guinevere remembered. "When you took the refugees to him."

He nodded again. "Yes, he is…"

"He is a monster," Lancelot finished for him. "He's a monster and I will kill him if Gawain does not."

"There will be a queue," Arthur told him. "Kaze has been waiting even longer than you have. And if Galehaut and Gawain are really… you're sure?"

"I was there," Lancelot confirmed.

Arthur and Guinevere exchanged glances. 

"I approve," he admitted, sounding a little bit surprised. "I was the witness for the ritual. And I approve."

Guinevere squeezed his arm gently. "You two were very close."

"We still are," he told her. "Like I said, it's complicated. Galehaut knows how complicated, too, he's been… remarkably accommodating."

Arthur sighed. "That's going to be our next war, isn't it? Over his heart or yours."

"Bold of you to assume I have a heart," Lancelot gave him a cold smile.

They split to prepare for the siege. Guinevere ordered an extra line of archers to the walls, to cover any messengers if they decided to ride for the gate. Arthur coordinated supplies and fortifications.

And Lancelot arranged for the reddest banners to be displayed at the walls and from every tower, like cascades of blood. Promises.

\--

The combined forces of the Distant Isle and the surrounding kingdom arrived at noon, and kept position to the west of the castle and field of engagement. For all that Arthur's forces were wearied by years of war and had only relaxed long enough to take a breath, Galehaut's forces were hale and eager for another engagement, and this time the blood-letter that had held them off at the bridge was on their side.

At the front of their forces rode the two kings, armor shining, Galehaut in gold and Gawain in silver. Both held shields with the blue field and rampant red lion of the house of Galehaut, which had also cheered the army-- the fierce enemy had been won over by their king's love. When they were sure the royals weren't listening, the story became that the fierce enemy had been conquered by the power of the king's enormous cock.

Gawain supposed it was a bit of both. 

Gawain rode under cover of arrow fire to the gate and was received in a clatter of gears and hooves and shouting. He met the others in the tower without bothering to remove his armor. He wouldn't be staying long anyway.

Arthur and Guinevere were struck dumb for a moment by his appearance. When he had left them, he had been barely off the sickbed, pale and bandaged and dirty and as silent as the grave he was constantly reaching for. Now he was all sun-touched grace and wore his armor with the ease that only great strength and training could provide. His eyes were bright and fierce, and he looked them in the eye without hesitation. 

"Gawain," Guinevere greeted first, genuinely glad for him. "You look good. When Lancelot said they'd made you king after only a few months, I didn't know what to think. It sounded so much like the old you."

He smiled in a way that was both amused and pained. "I am something else now. I am sorry that the joining could not wait until everyone could attend. I see my father arrived unfashionably early and to the wrong venue."

"I'm sure he'll be crushed to hear it," Arthur smirked.

Gawain's pained smile became a grin. "He can be a lot, at times."

"You two," Guinevere warned. "There's a force camped outside the castle and you're making puns?"

"We're just having some pun!"

"Wouldn't want to go into battle ill 'quipped."

She stared at them. After a brief pause, she asked, "Are you done?"

Gawain opened his mouth.

"No," she ordered.

Gawain closed his mouth.

"How many soldiers did you bring me?"

"Thirty thousand," he answered.

She fluttered her eyelashes. "Why Sir Gawain, you really know how to talk to women." She leaned over the map on the table and began lining up new wooden markers in a different color along the west of the field.

"Let me tell you a little more about my cavalry. They're all equipped with stout lances, good for a thrust."

Arthur grinned, then frowned. "Hey-!"

Guinevere snorted.

"Don't worry," Lancelot reassured him. "They're quite skilled in a rear attack as well."

Gawain chuckled. "They'll get between the enemy's lines and ride hard--"

Guinevere slapped him with a rolled map. "Lancelot. Arthur. Get out."

"What did I do?" Arthur objected.

"He's never going to focus with you two in the room, and I need the war marshall, not the teenage boy." She waved her hands at them. "Go outside. We'll bring you a plan when he gets his mind out of the gutter and onto the battlefield."

Arthur begrudgingly followed Lancelot out of the room. "You were complicit in this, too!"

"Get out!" She grinned. 

As soon as the door closed, the smile fell off Gawain's face.

Guinevere studied him as if she had never smiled in her life. "I'll get you as close as I can, but you know the line will be behind you. I can't let you go to the field unescorted."

"Put Galehaut and Lancelot behind me," he allowed. 

"And a line of soldiers."

"It will seem like we don't trust him," he replied.

"We don't trust him," she objected.

He clenched his hands. "It will seem rude. Being rude is enough pretense for him to attack."

She grimaced. "...fine. An escort of fifty mounted knights. To show respect. And the forces on the ground, in front of the castle, ready to charge if he breaks faith."

Gawain chewed the inside of his cheek unhappily. "Well. At least you and Arthur stay in the castle?"

"Whatever might make you believe we wouldn't?" 

He stared at her from under his eyebrows.

"That's fair. I will stay here and keep him here. But Gawain?" She leaned over the map. "Win."

He grinned. "Yes, Your Grace."


	15. The Blood of the Covenant

Lot sent a messenger under a white flag to deliver terms for the surrender of the kingdom of Logres and the list of names of people of import, whom he expected to become prisoners. Arthur, Guinevere, Sir Kaze, Sir Percival, and Sir Lancelot. He expected the enchantress Nimue to bend the knee, but understood that she would not be able to leave the water, so of course he would send his seneschal to receive her surrender individually.

Guinevere received the messenger courteously and politely, and courteously and politely she bade the messenger return with word that Lot could go fuck himself.

Lot sent someone to Galehaut's camp to ascertain the other king's place on the field, since he did not appear committed to either side of the fight. Galehaut laughed at the messenger and sent him away with nothing.

Dawn did what dawn does best, and dawned. The men formed their files and set their spears and so on. The castle gates opened around nine o'clock and a party of splendidly armored knights left, the gates closing soundly behind them. Galehaut joined them with a crew of his own knights, and together they rode out to the center of Lot's army frontline, where his sons were collected.

As they did, a hush and then a flurry of chatter rolled over the army. The knight at the center of the escort wore a green sash, and his armor was burnished with a deep green tone. The knight at his side was Sir Lancelot. This had to be the Green Knight, the savior of the fey. Sir Gawain, the liberator.

Some of the soldiers in the back slipped away into the woods, unwilling to fight. Gawain saw them do it; his eyes flicked across the lines and saw more of the same. None of these soldiers wanted to fight.

They stopped the horses before the cluster of ivory and black-clad knights.

"Sir Agravaine," Gawain greeted courteously. "Sir Gaheris."

They regarded him warily. Agravaine cleared his throat. "Is our brother with you?"

"I'm here," Gareth's voice called from behind the first row of knights.

"Hello Gareth! Have they treated you well?"

"Better than well," he reported back cheerfully.

Disguised by his helmet, Gawain's eye twitched. "I don't suppose you came here to check on Gareth, and just accidentally sent a messenger demanding Arthur's surrender?"

Agravaine grimaced. "Oh that. Well, you know father. He'll take what he can get. I don't suppose I could convince you to negotiate?"

"He didn't want to talk to me."

"But I do," his brother replied. 

Gawain blinked. It was the most independent and sincere-sounding thing he had ever heard him say.

"Say we didn't fight here," Agravaine continued. "Say Arthur and Guinevere pledged fealty to Lot as his vassals and keep Logres as a reward."

"They won't. They fought for it. For the values with which they rule. It's theirs."

"That's not why it's theirs," he dismissed. "No one believes that. I've got dozens of soldiers leaving from the back of this line because their family fought with you in the war and they know who you are. Some of those who remain might fight, but the rumors are widely spread, and they will be demoralized. No one wants to be here except father and it would be a shame if anyone had to die for this."

Gawain inclined his chin.

"Order Arthur and Guinevere to obey Lot. Surrender yourself as a political prisoner. Live out your days in the Orkneys where you belong."

Gawain barked a harsh laugh, so harsh that Agravaine's horse startled. "Belong? That's rich. Do you not remember the last time? When Lot put me back in that cell and left me without enough food or water and injured without medical treatment? Without heat? Belong. Fuck."

Agravaine stared at him. "He what?"

Gawain chuckled bitterly. "You must have known. That time, and the first time."

"I was not yet at court when you returned," he defended. "He let me guard the gate and occasionally bully dignitaries. Gaheris was nine. All we knew about you was that mum and father were fighting over whether to let you present yourself at court as a hedge knight or throw you out and hope you went away on your own."

He shifted in the saddle. Gringolet pawed the dirt impatiently. Gawain dropped his voice. "I won't go back there. He will kill me, and none of you will hear about it until it's too late. And even then, you won't be allowed to care."

Agravaine grimaced. "You are the keystone of all of this. You can choose peace instead of war. Save lives instead of sacrifice them. Please, brother."

His breath failed him for a moment as his chest squeezed. His mother had fought with his father over his fate? And Agravaine, his brother, who had him beaten and thrown in prison, had he really not known? Could it be that he had a family, after all that time and grief, that was waiting for him? He hesitated.

"No," Galehaut said behind him, voice strained. Then he inhaled and roared it. "No!"

Gawain took up the reins as Gringolet tossed his head, excited by the shouting and ready for a charge. Something about Galehaut's voice brought him back to himself, folding the last twenty years around him like a fortress. "Tell Lot that I will fight him for the whole game. If he wins, he takes Logres on the previously offered terms. Arthur and Guen swear fealty, and Galehaut's army returns to the Distant Isle. If I win, I take the Orkneys, Lothian, and become head of the household. Just him. No archers, no seconds, no brute squad. On the field between the armies. At eleven o'clock." He turned Gringolet and headed back across the field.

"What-- we're not finished here!" Agravaine shouted after him, as the escort turned to follow him back. "Brother! You could end all of this without shedding a drop of blood!"

This time, Gawain was glad to choose blood.

\--

The three hours of waiting passed by in an anxious flash, unlike the anticipation of battle had ever felt during the war. The realization was bittersweet: the hours felt too short because he no longer wanted to die. He was facing another existentially significant moment but without the nihilism and suicidal drive that had carried him through existential moments before.

He paced with Lancelot. He caught up with his son. He met his son's girlfriend and gave his blessing, should they wish to marry and should he not make it back to bless them again. He sat in private silence with Galehaut, touching and holding and not speaking any of the things they both already knew.

At around eleven o'clock, the crowd began to build on the walls. Soldiers, nobles, knights, castle staff, stable hands, craftspeople, beggars, mother's with their children, all made their way to the top of the walls so they could watch the fight. It left the courtyard conveniently empty.

He said goodbye to them, to his son and his husband and his former lover, and wished them peace no matter what. He mounted his horse and took up the best lance anyone could find in the castle, and the best sword, and if there were tears then surely no one was around to see them. The gate opened, and he rode out, feeling alive in a shaky, unsettled way that he definitely wasn't accustomed to. He let Gringolet hesitate as the gate closed, and he collected his ghosts behind him. 

The failings of his past were behind him; his son was a man, capable and intelligent. His murderer had become his lover and then his friend. The giant was behind him now, on his side. The king and the queen were his family, his true family, and though they abandoned him again and again, it would never be as profoundly as his blood family had.

'Blood' family. He chuckled at the thought. The family behind him had shed more blood in the same fights, where it mingled with his own, than the family before him ever would, even if there were a thousand years to make up the gap. Damn Agravaine for trying to manipulate him, for appealing to his sense of sacrifice. He would slice him open from neck to groin and send him back to their mother with his entrails hanging over his horse's flanks. 

Gringolet danced impatiently under him.

Behind him, the crowd on the wall began to shout encouragement and challenges, to bang on the stones and stomp their feet and pound their armor and shields. If you lose, you will die. If you fall, you will die. If you yield, you will die. Slowly, it resolved into a steady rhythm. He couldn't tell if it was real or in his mind, and it didn't seem to matter. 

Thump-thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump. _Who-are-you_?

Gawain remembered the twist of his guts while he lay in the cold of the prison under Lot's keep. He let the memory chase the anxious nausea away. He let the sunlight chase the cold of the memory out of his bones, and strengthen him. He let the memory of his lovers' hands on his body carry away the memory of how the geas on his cell had twisted the Hidden's Blessing. There was no need to fear this man-- this villain-- before him. He was already so much more than Lot would ever be. 

Thump-thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump. _Who-are-you_.

He gave Gringolet the reins and his shins, set his lance, and tilted towards Lot without further preamble.

_Who-are-you._

_I'm the Green Knight. I am your doom._


	16. The Last Breath

Lot removed his helmet and called across the field. "Yield."

Gawain's horse opened up into a full gallop, eating ground like it was born to do nothing else. Its nostrils flared wide and it lowered its head even with its shoulders and pulled its lips back, which made it look more like a wolf than a horse. 

Lot realized he probably couldn't even hear him over the pounding of hooves, but he wanted his side to see how merciful he was. This poor, insane creature with delusions of grand origin was unstoppably violent and had to be put down, regardless of his war record. And the fair and just King Lot would be the one to do it. After all, he'd been requested. And he had to admit to himself, as he fastened the last tie and settled his lance in his arm, he was going to enjoy humiliating and killing him. If he was who he said he was, that he hadn't been swept out of the womb by poison was already an unforgivable oversight.

He drew back the reins and kicked his horse into motion, then gave it his spurs. Morgause had shown no signs of having nursed any child when his family inspected her on their wedding night. She hadn't been a virgin, of course, but he assured them it was because he'd seized the opportunity early. He supposed it was technically possible she had given birth and then given the child to a wet nurse, but during the inspection he had put such fear into her that she would not have been able to lie to him. Then again still, he had not asked specifically that. Not until the mistake had turned up at the gates, begging like a dog for attention, then unhorsing Agravaine.

 _Well_ , he thought as they tilted at each other. _If you want something done right_.

Their lances struck true. Gawain's lance shattered Lot's shield and wrenched his arm out of its socket. Lot's lance shattered, but that was the plan; the handle was an iron spike, and it punched through Gawain's shield and armor, grazed his shield arm, and went into his side.

Somehow, while this exchange threw Lot from his horse, Gringolet had dropped his shoulder and let the force carry over him, then snapped his teeth savagely at Lot's mount. Gawain, with hardly a shout of pain, remained in the saddle.

 _Annoying_ , Lot thought over the ringing in his ears.

Gawain pulled his shield away from his body, taking the iron spike and a spray of his blood with it. He dismounted.

Lot climbed to his feet. "Yield," he offered. "We have a skilled surgeon who can treat that."

Gawain chuckled at him, the sound muffled by his helmet. "The most skilled surgeon in the world is behind me." Galen's words were already in his mind, confidently describing the wound and how to treat it. Gawain rolled his shield arm to test his range of motion after the blow. 

Lot drew his sword. "I have given you so many opportunities to survive this. You seem so determined to die. Your reputation warned me this might be so."

He chuckled again and drew his own sword. He reached through his feet to the earth, where he felt the Hidden reach up to meet him. A gentle pressure crept through the gap between his sabaton and greave, then wove its way up his leg to the wound in his side. He tasted blood for a moment after it entered, then something sour and herbal. 

Lot's eyes widened. "Fey magic."

He grinned. "They never did answer you, did they?"

He answered by striding forward and swinging his sword.

Gawain parried and stepped into his guard, thrusting at the armor gap at his hip, then when Lot slipped away from him, he stepped out of range and turned.

Lot snarled and swung again. He was fast and his line of attack left nothing to the imagination-- he was fighting to kill as fast as possible. Gone was the Lot from the prison, who would have toyed with him for as long as possible. The cruelty had finally given way before practicality.

Gawain parried and thrusted into momentary openings and exploited his opponent's lack of shield and disabled shield arm, but it was like battering a stone. They fought until the sun was at its highest and blood colored their armor and the field around them.

They finally broke apart for a moment to breathe and stare each other down.

"You shouldn't be able to call forth the Hidden," Lot told him, audibly enraged. "They answer to summoners and druids, not hedge knights."

"You'll go to your grave, underestimating me." Gawain lifted his visor and spat a mouthful of blood on the ground. "You murdered for power and married into it and hurt people to keep it. As it turns out, all you need to do to get it and hold it is to be good and serve others."

"Oh, fuck off," Lot dismissed. He lifted his sword again and closed the distance between them.

They carried on tearing tiny pieces out of each other for another hour. As the sun began its usual descent, Gawain knew he was losing his strength advantage. And even though he was broadly built and strong from years of training, the hardships of the past were as present in his body as the adaptations. His side complained loudly, and an echoing complaint answered it from his hip, and his knee joined the chorus. The graze wound on his arm gossiped loudly with the scars of his burns.

Lot was a bear trained to fight in pits. He had never known a hungry night or a hollow day, his wounds had always been sewn up the right way. For him, pain was a passtime, a hobby.

Which meant its novelty had to be wearing on him all the worse.

Gawain settled into the rhythm of the fight and ignored the bleeding and ache. Instead of driving the attack like he usually did, hoping to overpower enemies or reach his own death sooner, he chose defense, concentrating on redirection and evasion.

This was not what Lot had expected. It was not what the Green Knight's reputation told of him. It was infuriating. 

Lot drove forward instead, impatient and enraged. He brought his sword up and prepared for a strike to high two, but he stumbled. His weight pitched slightly too far forward.

Gawain dropped his shield and stepped into his space, grabbed his throat, tucked his hip behind his enemy's, pitched their combined weight in the opposite direction of the strike, and slammed Lot into the ground. He pinned him and roared, "Yield."

Lot released his grip on his sword and stilled. "Son."

"Yield," he shouted again, pressing down on his throat.

"Son, please," he choked. 

Gawain felt the motion before he saw it. The shield arm he thought disabled moved too fast. He released Lot's throat and knocked the dagger out of his hand before it could find its way into his side. 

He stood, drew back his sword, and as Lot scrambled to his feet and reached for his sword, struck off his head. 

Lot's head rolled down across his shoulder and tumbled away from them. His body collapsed, then jerked spasmodically-- thump-thump-thump-- then nothing.

Gawain in his rage seized the head and battered it against the corpse, screaming wordless rage at it for not being a better person, for not acknowledging his mistakes and embracing him as a son, for not being a better king, for not being a man, gods damn him. He screamed until his voice gave out and the helmet in his hand crumpled around its gruesome contents. Then he cried.

He felt a movement near him again, like he had felt the knife, but less sharp. He rounded on it anyway, prepared to use the head as a weapon if someone wanted to continue the fight.

Behind him stood a thin woman with copper hair and pale skin, face hardened by years of sorrow and determination. She held up a hand to stay him from swinging.

Gawain stared at her in shock. After what seemed like a lifetime, he gathered the presence of mind to remove his helmet. He dropped it and his father's head.

The armies behind her stirred and took up the news that the king had fallen. The entire host of them clanged and creaked and shuffled as they stood down.

"I don't understand," he told her.

"They can't see me," she replied. "You defeated him. Don't ever mention me." She turned to go.

"No, please," he begged, stepping forward and reaching for her but missing her arm as she hurried away. "Tell me why."

She stopped and regarded him with surprise.

He tried to ask again, to ask more, but his throat closed. His voice disappeared again, just when he needed it. Did you help me because I am your son?

She watched the frustration and pain roll over his face like storm clouds, and something about it must have moved her. "I will visit the castle to offer our surrender. We will talk then." She turned and stepped through a hazy mistake in reality, and was gone.

He watched after her for a long time, then he knelt and collected his sword and wiped it clean, sheathed it. Then he collected his own helmet and the helmeted head of his father. He carried it back across the green towards the castle, listening to the men on the wall shouting victory and glory.

\--

Galehaut and Lancelot met him at the gates, concern and joy together. They checked him carefully for signs of injury, then took him to the armory to shed his bloodied metal shell. They drove all the squires away and closed the room to give him some privacy.

Lancelot set to work dabbing clean the wound in his side, then ran his fingers carefully around the vines that had closed over it and stretched around his ribs.

Gawain laid his hand over Lancelot's and met his startled eyes. "Leave it for tomorrow," he rasped. "I need to be awake for the surrender." 

Galehaut took the oozing head away and put it in a bag so they wouldn't have to look at it, and to give them a moment to themselves.

Lancelot held his gaze. "Aren't you in pain?"

There was something about the way he said it, the mercy in his tone, the promise of care, that combined with the exhaustion from the waning adrenaline of the fight in a very specific way. Gawain tilted forward and crashed face-first into him, kissing desperately, hands roaming and grasping without direction or plan.

Lancelot groaned and gathered him into his arms, crushing him protectively against his chest and letting Gawain wrap around him like a vine. He turned his head and broke the kiss long enough to ask. "You are a married man, won't--"

A large hand slid over the back of Lancelot's neck, cradled the back of his head, and firmly guided him into a very different kiss, framed by the strangeness of a black beard and tasting very different, but no less hot. "If you don't kiss him again," Galehaut threatened, "There will never be another fire in the world sufficient to warm any heart. All the stars will go out, and we will perish under the ice."

Lancelot's eyes widened, then he turned back to Gawain and kissed him fiercely, unwilling to question in that moment the kindness so solidly and insistently thrust upon him. It all seemed very dramatic when Galehaut put it like that, especially with the building rumble of his voice, but who was he to say, when everything he wanted was before him?

There wasn't time or will to go further. As the energy of the fight left Gawain and the cold and exhaustion set in, they wrapped him in a blanket and kissed him and held him up between them so he could lean on them and work through it.

When the shaking stopped, he kissed them both in gratitude. Then his kisses became a smile, sincere and wide, and that became a giddy laugh. "It's over," he told them. "It's finally over. He is over." He leaned back against Galehaut's chest, and did not let go of Lancelot's waist.

The position was intimate and his laughing was infectious; soon they were all practically in tears. They unwrapped their limbs and readied themselves to go out and tell everyone of the victory, and they did their best to plaster cheap smirks over their relieved giggles, but then Lancelot remembered something.

"Oh! Can't forget this," he retrieved the canvas bag containing Lot's head and held it up to indicate what it was.

Galehaut smothered a helpless laugh, which set Gawain off again. Lancelot's false seriousness failed under the peer pressure, and they all went out still chortling with exhausted relief.

\--

They managed to get their shit together just as they approached Arthur and Guinevere. The royals were visibly relieved to see him in one piece.

Gawain sauntered up and held out the bag to the queen. "Your Grace," he gave a small bow. "I offer you this commemoration of our victory on this day."

Guinevere extracted the head from the bag and admired it, careful not to let the gore drip onto her clothes. "Oh Gawain, you shouldn't have! This is a family heirloom, after all."

He grinned savagely. "I'd rather not have that thing staring at me from the walls of the family villa while I'm taking supper. And I know you're a connoisseur of trophies."

"Well, I'm sure we'll find a nice place to display him somewhere here." She tossed it back in the bag and handed it to a green-looking squire. "Put him on a spike near the gate." She turned back to the three of them. "Let's go inside and get cleaned up. I'll have the kitchens get started on a meal. I suspect we'll have some dignitaries to dignify soon. We'll all need some wine before that."

Gawain grimaced. "Maybe something a little stronger."

\----

Gawain could have been three bottles in and it would not have mattered; the moment Anna Morgause stepped into the hall, his blood went cold and he was sober again. He must have tensed, because Galehaut's hand was at his elbow and he heard Lancelot straighten.

The rest of the room seemed to feel similarly; a hush fell over the collected knights and lords, and her procession came right up to the high table where the kings and queen and their closest knights were seated; Lancelot next to Arthur, then Gawain, then Galehaut. Morgause curtsied so low that her forehead almost touched her knees, then she straightened and took a snow-white satin cloth from the arms of a maid next to her. 

"I offer this, the symbol of our surrender, and ask your mercy on our people, who are your people. Please take my kingdom and be my king, and let me hold my lands in fief to you."

Arthur stood and started his prepared speech. "Queen Anna Morgause, of--"

"I wasn't speaking to you," she told him.

The room fell utterly silent.

She carried the white satin flag of surrender up to the high table, and laid it across Gawain's arms where they rested on the table. She looked at him with an intense green gaze he had always avoided in his own reflection, but now he couldn't look away. "I will place myself under the protection of the knight."

The hall erupted into a roar, half a cheer and half an argument-- until Gawain rose and wrapped the cloth around her shoulders. Then the cheers won out, and there was nothing to be done but wait until everyone exhausted themselves.

Gawain smiled a small, hopeful smile.

She did not return it. 

Once it was possible to be heard again, Galehaut stood and salvaged the diplomatic situation. "Your Majesty, you do rightly. He is a worthy knight and king. He has to the High King's authority submitted himself and his victory here today."

Gawain glanced over at Galehaut carefully. _What do I do now_? 

Galehaut tilted his head at Arthur. 

_Right_. "King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, I presented to you my victory as proof of my respect and obedience," he said loudly for the benefit of the court. "But I ask that you leave this captive and her lands to me, as this is a family affair."

Arthur nodded, shooting a relieved look at him across the table at an angle no one could see. "In gratitude for your loyal service in peace and in war, I do so grant this boon. The lands of Lothian and the Orkneys are in your care. You may style yourself their king." He sat down as the hall erupted again, and breathed out a big sigh. Guinevere squeezed his hand supportively.

Lancelot stood, since the other two were already standing, and it was getting awkward anyhow. He turned to Arthur. "We should probably all step out."

"Good idea," Arthur agreed. "Go get acquainted."

The four of them filed out of the great hall and made their way by unspoken agreement toward Gawain's chambers.

"I hope you plan on staying on as queen," Gawain told Morgause lightly. "I'm not much for ruling."

Galehaut clicked his tongue. "He's lying."

"Yes," Lancelot agreed. "He really loves bossing people. He is very good at it. And his tastes are expensive."

Gawain blushed and pulled a face at them both. "You are embarrassing me in front of my mum."

Percival slipped out of the shadows in the hall and fell in step with them as if he'd always been there. "No, they're right, someone should fucking warn her."

"Don't you start," Gawain chided at the same time Lancelot trsked at his language.

Running footsteps echoed along the hallway. They paused and waited while a sixth person caught up to them.

"Mother!"

She dropped the white cloth and reached out to the newcomer with visible joy. "Gareth!"

They embraced.

Gawain clenched his jaw and stood very still, watching their easy affection with distant eyes until Galehaut laid a concerned hand on his shoulder and forced him to turn away. He closed his eyes and tried to block out the sound of their reunion.

"Papa?" Percival prompted quietly. "Is this--?"

He nodded, opening his eyes. Percival's expression of suspicion and caution made him proud for a moment; his boy knew something was wrong. "Yes. That is your grandmother."

"I didn't know you had a son," she admitted. "Gareth never mentioned it in his letters."

They'd been writing letters. She could have written to him too, if she had wanted. He exhaled as if punched. "Let's go to my apartments so we can speak freely."

They walked in silence the rest of the way there, then collected on the variety of cushions and chairs in the sitting room, dusty from his long absence. A servant stoked the fire, poured wine, and then left the door closed tightly behind them.

"So," Gawain began with a smile he did not feel. "What did Gareth write about?"

Gareth's cheeks colored briefly. He'd been caught.

"That you and Sir Lancelot had welcomed him to court and made certain he was well provided for, and could want for nothing," Morgause answered for him. "That he was safe here in a way he had never been safe anywhere, and that he made friends easily. About the end of the war." She turned to Gareth and raised an eyebrow. "He stopped writing after telling of the defeat to King Galehaut."

"Much has happened since then, which is difficult to describe in a letter," Gareth smiled sheepishly.

Morgause glanced over at Gawain. "I can see that. I suppose you mean to return to the Distant Isle now that all of this is done?"

Gawain nodded.

Percival made a noise of objection.

His mouth pulled thin, apologetic. "You should come with us," he offered.

"There is a joining ceremony in the last week of August, as our ritual was done in such a hurry before the battle," Galehaut rescued him. "As the mother of the groom, you are of course welcome to attend. And we couldn't dream of having any ceremony without the groom's son."

Percival frowned, but relented with a sigh. "It's your life, and you should live it however makes you happy. I'll come to your stupid wedding party."

Gawain smiled fondly.

Morgause set her wine cup down and clasped her hands together. "I am not his mother."

Gawain flinched, but made no sound.

"I say this not to be unkind, but because a mother is someone who earns that title through dedication and love. I have given neither to Gawain. I did not even name him. The people who cared for him should be called his mother and father. Not me, and certainly not Lot."

Gawain tried to speak, but this time he didn't try very hard. It would not have mattered anyway. His voice was gone and his soul was so tired from trying to reach these people.

She gave him an apologetic smile. "After the abuse you had from him, and the neglect you had from me, I'm not certain how you aren't furious."

"With Lot, he was," Galehaut took over the conversation while Lancelot comforted Gawain with a hand on his back. "You were always the more complicated issue."

Percival spoke up. "Are you why he can't speak? Did you do something to him?"

She watched Gawain for a moment. "Yes and no."

"Bitch," Percival stood up, hands clenched. "Let him free."

Gareth caught his wrist with a warning look and shook his head. "Don't."

He shook him off. "I won't let her hurt him anymore, I don't give a shit who she is!"

Morgause smiled at him. "Brave and hot headed. You are definitely from my line."

"What the fuck do you know, if you aren't his mother!" Percival shouted.

Her smile fell away. "You are right to say so. And you are right to be angry. It's not magic. I cannot undo it. And it isn't intentional."

Percival remained standing between them, arms crossed. "What did you do!"

She pursed her lips, then bowed her head for a moment. "I do owe you that much." She looked up. "Gawain. Are these the people you trust with knowledge of your life?"

He nodded. "My family," he managed.

"You are blessed with so much family. Remember that." She paused. "Lot and I were an arranged marriage. When my family brought me to the north to present me and make the agreement, I was twelve years old. He was a handsome seventeen year old and already a knight. Our parents were too busy arguing over the details to notice what we were doing, and I didn't know enough even to be outraged. I was so empty-headed as a child."

Galehaut's expression grew very dark.

"It wasn't until months later-- far too late to do anything about it that wouldn't have killed me-- that they noticed what had happened. What was happening. And I didn't understand it. No one explained it to me. My body changed, and then a baby came out of it. The midwife left you in a basket and told me to feed you as soon as I was able, then my family threw her out. They probably killed her. 

"You cried for an hour, then you stopped and I was so relieved. I wasn't ready to be a mother." She paused. "I think that's why your voice fails when you need reassurance. I think it's because you don't believe, not in your heart, that anyone will hear you if you call for them, or touch you if you reach for them. Because I didn't." She looked away for a moment, into the hearth. "My father took your basket out of my room. I thought you were already dead. Then you turned up at the keep, telling everyone you were our firstborn son. Imagine my surprise."

Galehaut and Lancelot sat on either side of him, Lancelot's arm around his waist and Galehaut's around his shoulders. With their strength, he managed to croak a question, though his jaw was stiff and disobedient. "And now? You are free of him. You can… you found it in your heart to write to Gareth and… the others who stayed on the islands, you…"

"Are you asking, am I going to be your mother now?"

He nodded faintly.

She frowned sympathetically. "Gawain, it doesn't work like that. The others are my children because I understood them, I wanted most of them, and I raised them. I haven't touched you since you came out of me. It's been thirty-five years. I don't have the first clue who you are."

"So learn," Lancelot growled.

"It doesn't work that way, either. I'm sorry." Morgause spread her hands palm-up. "None of this is my fault. It took me a very long time to understand that. And it's not yours either. It's better to try and forget it, if you can. Or try not to think about it."

"You said you didn't touch me," he managed. "So… during the war, the… you didn't… you didn't project or…"

Her forehead wrinkled, then realization dawned. "Oh. I'm sorry, no. If you experienced something, it wasn't me."

He shivered a little, but only Galehaut and Lancelot would have known it. He stared into the middle distance and mulled this over.

"You have done me an incredible favor, by killing Lot," she told him. "And I am in your debt. You can write to me, if it helps you. And if you want to tell people I am your mother, I won't stop you anymore."

Galehaut ducked his head and whispered so that only Gawain would hear.

He didn't respond. He was staring at the basket on the floor and its tiny, silent contents, hardly moving. Dying.

"That's why it's better not to think about it," Morgause told him, standing. "If you look directly at it, it will be the only thing you can see."

Gawain imagined he heard his infant self make one last, tiny cry for help as she left; but the sound died in his own throat. The ache was in his own chest. The cold was in his own bones. The weakness it had left behind was in the center of him, and everything finally made sense. His mother left him again, but this time the abandonment didn't inspire panic; there was nothing slipping from him that he could grasp at, and perhaps there never had been.

"Good riddance," Percival practically snarled as the door closed behind her.

"It's not her fault," he murmured.

"But she--"

"There are a lot of people worthy of anger and blame," he agreed, "but she isn't one of them. No one told her what could happen. Even if they had, he would probably have taken her by force. He was a monster. No one helped her when they should have." He sighed and ran his hands through his hair, then clasped them in front of him and rested his chin there. "I guess I have always known this."

Galehaut squeezed him a little harder against his side. "Do you understand how important you are?"

He looked up quizzically.

"She isn't your family," he told him, voice mostly a rumbling from his chest as it usually was when he was holding back anger so that he could be soft. "She was right, though, when she said you are blessed with so much family. And we will all love and protect you, as much as you let us."

Gawain smiled and leaned against his side. "I know. I am blessed. More than anyone has any right to be. I had just hoped that maybe it was just because Lot was such a controlling bastard, that maybe she had no choice." He shook his head. "I can't put it into words properly."

"You wished you had a mother," Lancelot told him. 

"Yes. I suppose I did."

"Well, you haven't got one of those," he replied, "But you have a son and a brother, and two lovers. I am not the expert on how many husbands a fey man should have, but I hear that two is rather more than the norm."

He cracked a pained smile. "Yes. That is true. My midday, my midnight, and my world."

"We love you," Galehaut reassured, kissing the top of his head in his gently infuriating way. "When you call to us, we will hear you. When you reach for us, we will hold you. When you smile, we will celebrate you. And when you are sad, we will grieve with you. You never have to be alone again for the rest of your life, if that's what you want."

Gawain stood and gestured for them to stand, too. Then he gathered them both into a hug, and his son, and his younger brother, and they stood with their arms linked together while Gawain breathed in the feeling of love and protection, and the child in the basket at his feet gave up waiting for his mother and finally died. 

"Thank you," he told them.


End file.
